Koo Bags Rs 51.03 Crore In A Round Led By Tiger Global

Updated on: 26 November 2022 10:34 pm

Founded by Sasha Mirchandani in 2012, Kae Capital is known for investing in start-ups looking for pre-seed to pre-Series A funding

Kae Capital Announces The Final Close Of Fund III At Rs 767 Crore Photo: Founded by Sasha Mirchandani in 2012, Kae Capital is known for investing in start-ups looking for pre-seed to pre-Series A funding

Koo raised Rs 51.03 crore ($6.3 million) in an investment round led by Tiger Global and Accel Partners. Apart from these two, investors including Kalaari Capital, 3one4 Capital and Dream Incubator (DI) also invested in the Indian social media application .

This is the second major capital infusion by the home-grown start-up that was founded in 2020 to compete with Twitter.

Prior to this, Bengaluru-based Koo raised $10 million (Rs 79 crore) from a clutch of investors including Caspier Venture Partner, BharatPe's founder Ashneer Grover and the Ravi Modi Family Trust in two tranches, The Economic Times reported.

Follow our WhatsApp channel

Koo's board of directors passed a special resolution to issue 5,423 B4 compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) at an issue price of Rs 94,193.26 each to raise the entire amount of Rs 51.03 crore. Tiger Global and Accel Partners invested Rs 16.47 crore each while Kalaari Capital and 3one4 Capital poured Rs 8.24 crore each. Dream Incubator infused Rs 1.63 crore.

Koo plans to utilise the capital for marketing, growth and expansion activities.

Talking about the investment, the company's founder and chief executive officer, Aprameya Radhakrishna said, “We have aggressive plans to grow into one of the world’s largest social media platforms in the next few years. Every Indian is cheering for us to get there soon”.

The Indian microblogging platform, which claims to have 60 lakh users in over 100 countries, has unexpected benefitted from the ongoing Twitter shenanigans ever since Tesla chief Elon Musk took over the social media major.

To attract more users Koo announced four new features to its app, enabling users to upload up to 10 profile pictures, draft, save and schedule a Koo post. Currently available in 10 languages, it claimed that it has recently completed 50 million downloads.

In the financial year (FY) 2021, Koo registered Rs 7.76 lakh in revenue from operations. However, it has not been smooth going for the company, which also witnessed a sharp surge in its net losses.

In FY 2020, its net loss stood at Rs 12.17 crore, which increased to Rs 35.18 crore in FY 2021.