'Well Capitalised... Long Way Ahead': Amid Layoff News, Koo Says There Will Be Better Times

"We are making great progress with revenue and will look to raise funds in the future as necessary," a Koo spokesperson told ABP Live on Thursday.

Koo claimed that it is well-capitalised and is not looking at raising funds.

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Homegrown micro-blogging platform Koo has fired 30 per cent of its staff in recent months, a report by Bloomberg said on Thursday. This comes amid the firm's struggle with losses and an inability to raise funds, the report added. However, talking to ABP Live, Koo claimed that it is well-capitalised and is not looking at raising funds.

“We are well capitalised with our recent fundraising of $10 million in Jan 2023. We aren't looking at raising funds right now. We are making great progress with revenue and will look to raise funds in the future as necessary," a Koo spokesperson told ABP Live on Thursday.

The three-year-old micro-blogging startup, backed by Tiger Global has laid off 30 per cent of its about 260 workers as the “global sentiment right now is more focused on efficiency than growth and businesses need to work toward proving unit economics”.

"Like most startups, Koo also built in a workforce to account for spikes. Given the current market environment and external realities of a global slowdown, we get affected too. Some of the most profitable companies in the world have shed tens of thousands of jobs. We are a young startup with a long way ahead of us. The global sentiment right now is more focused on efficiency than growth and businesses need to work towards proving unit economics," the Koo spokesperson noted.

Within three years of launch, Koo has witnessed more than 60 million app downloads and is said to be the second largest micro-blog available with support for over 20 global languages.

Koo started its monetisation experiments in September 2022 and within six months it has one of the highest ARPU per DAU compared to Indian social media companies and direct global competitors, the company claimed.

"With over 100+ brands advertising on the platform, we will continue to experiment with monetisation to build a sustainable business," the company spokesperson added. 

Earlier last month, the micro-blogging platform started allowing users to compose and draft posts using ChatGPT, the OpenAI chatbot that has been taking the world by storm for its human-like responses to user queries.

Koo had said it has launched a new feature which enables creators and users of the platform to write and posts texts on the platform using ChatGPT. However, the new feature is only available for 'Verified' and 'Influential' personalities currently. Koo said the new feature will be rolled out to all users soon in the near future.