Why pay $8 when you get everything free on our platform: Koo co-founder

In a Q&A, Aprameya Radhakrishna, who is also the CEO of the made-in-India microblogging platform, says Koo is even open to hiring those Twitter sacked and that verification on Koo is free for life

Tiger Global backed Koo, the made-in-India microblogging platform recently crossed 50 million downloads and is confident that its will hit the 100 million by next year. Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and CEO, Koo even said the company is open to hiring those who have been sacked from Twitter and says that verification on Koo is free for life. In an interview with Shivani Shinde he talks about Twitter, growing acceptance of Koo with over 7,000 eminent accounts. Edited excerpts:

Koo crossed the 50-million download point. What are your plans to touch the 100 million number?

We've been growing very well. India is a fantastic market and responding very well to our approach of local language first. We've been aggressive in growth and we have focused on organic acquisition, which is more aligned to the market rather than paid acquisition. Also this year, we want to focus on efficiency as the market is also expecting players to be more efficient about their businesses.

Inorganic growth is when we do explicit marketing on platforms like Google and FB, apart from working with OEMs to have our app inbuilt. Keeping in mind our focus on building efficiency into the business, we are not doing that. We are focused on organic, which is more word-of-mouth.

Does that mean you lose out market share to some other players?

No. We are a niche player. We've carved our own mode on the platform. There is no other Indian platform on which some of the most important folks of the country are talking. We've got 19 chief ministers on the platform, giving out updates every day. We've got Bollywood celebrities and cricketers.

We don't have any paid content producers. We are social platform that is used for the benefits that we have built it for--expression of thoughts and opinions. So you might have platforms that are focusing on entertainment, whether it's short video or otherwise, but we're not focusing deeply on engagement.

How has the Twitter issue impacted Koo?

Twitter moves will impact those who use them. In India the user base is super small. Are we seeing major ripples of what is happening right now? One per cent of India uses Twitter and that one per cent is probably mulling over whether or not to pay $8 and that's going to help us in getting that one percent--you know, kind of influence majority of the one per cent to probably come and use a free platform. Why pay dollars when you get more features for free?

That is the only true impact, because 98-99 per cent of India does not use Twitter and that is the market that we are focused on. The opportunity that has opened up for us is to actually think of all the other countries in the world, which might also need a product like Twitter.

Koo is a free platform but how do you intend to monetise going ahead?

We will do a very 'India first' monetisation strategy. We;ve already started some avenues of monetisation. As we experiment more and more, we will bring in innovation in monetisation. Some of the larger traditional social media have not really looked at these at all. The method in which monetisation is being done right now, for instance on Twitter, you have to pay to prove you're a real person. That's something we aren't comfortable doing.

As a social platform it’s our responsibility to give genuine avenues on which users can identify themselves as real people. We have done that on Koo. We've given a free self-verification feature where you can actually enter your Aadhaar, get an OTP and get a green tick verified. If you are an eminent person you will get a yellow tick. We do not charge anything. Twitter is still experimenting with a lot of things, but this version of what they have done will never be done by us.

Can you share some of the monetisation plans Koo is working on?

Most of these are experiments we're running parallel and some of them look promising conceptually. Some will start going live next year, but no updates now.

I think the world is getting divided between whether a platform does advertising or transactions. I think the truth is somewhere in between where you can be true to users and find a balance. On one side, Netflix is moving from transaction revenue to looking at advertising, and on the other, Twitter is moving from advertising revenue to transaction.

I think the truth is somewhere in between and that is the balance that we're trying to find for India.

One of the features of Koo was the language. How many languages does the platform support and how has the adoption been?

Our focus has been to be an inclusive platform for free expression on the open internet. Everybody's voice in India is stuck in whatsapp groups and we want to make sure they can be heard outside as well.

On Koo, 80-85 per cent of our platform is Indian languages, and only 15-20 per cent is English. With changes happening in the English world, we also see an opportunity to go deep into the English world as well because a lot of people are not going to be happy with some of the moves that Twitter may be.

For English users there are two use cases on Koo. In the open internet an English-speaking platform can reach only to those who understand the language. With Koo, for the first time an English speaker user can actually effortlessly translate and distribute to the language community. You can now create following the Hindi language base as well. Our multilingual Koo feature allows this.

We have built the first use case and it is time for users to create the second use case. You already have the English user talking to other English users on Instagram for lifestyle, Twitter, for thoughts and opinions, LinkedIn for career and professionals. Now comes a unique opportunity to build the second use case.

One of the criticisms for big techs and for social media has been the use of bots and how fake accounts have been created. Comments.

One of the things that naturally happens in India is that logins have been through a phone with OTP verification. With that itself, a lot of this bot issue gets solved. The bots are easier to make and create when there are email oriented logins, which is the legacy system.

In our case 95 per cent-plus Koo users log through their phone number. We have put in a lot of checks and balances to even blacklist certain email addresses that are typically known for bot creation. We have introduced steps to make sure we have real users and not bots on the platform.

What are your fund-raising plans?

Last year we raised funds from Tiger Global and early this year we raised another $10 million from family offices in India. We've got enough money. What we wanted to do is become more efficient as an engine before we go out and raise another round of funding again. It is basically a reflection of the market. So markets are demanding efficiency, and that's what we focus on as well, while we continue to grow.