2021: A Landmark Year For Koo

By mid-December 2021, the Koo App reached the significant milestone of 20 million downloads. Koo launched its first television campaign to inspire people to express themselves online

Koo App was ranked No.3 in the list of next 5 Hottest Products from Asia Pacific (APAC) by The Product Report 2021

5 key milestones that made the year memorable

2021 was certainly an unforgettable year for made-in-India micro-blogging platform - Koo. The multilingual platform - which empowers Indians to express themselves and share thoughts in their mother tongue - attained several milestones to position itself as the platform-of-choice for native language speakers in India. Here’s a glimpse into the Koo App’s most significant achievements in 2021:

#1: 20 million downloads

By mid-December 2021, the Koo App reached the significant milestone of 20 million downloads. Among several growth drivers was the momentum witnessed during the T20 World Cup 2021, where the platform provided an immersive cricket experience to fans through its  - #SabseBadaStadium campaign, which had prominent cricketers and commentators leveraging the platform’s multilingual features to connect with fans across Indian languages. Backed by robust technologies and innovative language translation features, the Koo App is now poised to cross 100 million downloads in the next one year. 

#2: First-ever TVC

Koo - an innovation in the world of language-based micro-blogging - launched its first television campaign to inspire people to express themselves online and engage with one another in their native language. The TVC consisted of a series of short-format advertisements built around the tagline - #KooKiyaKya. It reflected users’ desire to leverage social media for self-expression, and to connect with their communities in a language of their choice. Launched at the start of the T20 World Cup 2021, the ads - conceptualized by Ogilvy India - were shown across leading sports channels, and generated a lot of buzz through their quirks, wit and humor.

#3: 10 Languages & Multilingual Features

Launched in March 2020 in Kannada, the Koo App is now available in 10 languages - Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Bengali, Assamese and English. The platform is truly inclusive - as it removes language barriers at a digital level, and connects people irrespective of their cultural and linguistic diversities. Users on the platform - including eminent personalities - express themselves and share their thoughts freely in languages of their choice, without any need for English translations. Moreover, the platform’s innovative multilingual feature enables users to have their post translated in real-time across languages, while retaining the sentiment and nuances attached to the original text. This enhances the reach - as it allows a user to engage with a larger audience and thus gain greater traction on the platform. The Koo App is eager to provide its offerings across all the 22 official languages of India in the future. 

#4:Ranked Among Hottest Digital Brands in APAC

The Koo App was ranked No.3 in the list of next 5 Hottest Products from Asia Pacific (APAC) by The Product Report 2021 - created by Amplitude. Koo was the only social media brand from across APAC, US and EMEA to be rated in the prestigious report. Koo was also one of the only two brands from India to find a mention in the report - which showcased the hottest emerging digital products that are shaping people’s digital lives. The report described the Koo App as a “social media platform with a unique differentiator for its primarily Indian user base”. It stated that Koo is “poised to become the social media platform of choice for a community that’s more than 1 billion strong.” 

#5: Promotes Fair Use of Language

For the first time ever, the Central Institute for Indian Languages (CIIL) - a Government of India body - signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a social media entity to strengthen content moderation across languages and to curb misuse. Bombinate Technologies Pvt.Ltd., the holding company of Koo, signed an MoU with CIIL to promote fair use of language online, to limit online abuse, bullying and the use of offensive and obscene phrases across Indian languages. Through this collaboration, CIIL will create a corpus of expressions considered offensive or sensitive across 22 official Indian languages. In turn, the Koo App will share relevant data to create the corpus and provide technological support to build interfaces that will host the corpus for public access. This is a long-term collaboration for promoting responsible online behavior and to help users to stay safe online. The Koo App will develop a deep and nuanced understanding of the logic, grammar and context of words that are used in native languages, especially on social media; while parallelly helping identify offensive terms and phrases that can lead to discord and online bullying. This will assist users to curate more engaging content in their respective languages; thereby consolidating Koo’s position as India’s leading multi-language social media platform.