Is Koo beating Twitter? Platform crosses 50 mn downloads, targets 100 mn

Is Koo beating Twitter? Koo, the Indian alternative to Twitter, has been around since 2020 and offers a multilingual micro blogging platform for users across the subcontinent. With Elon Musk taking over Twitter last week after completing the $44 billion deal, Koo has now released the metrics, showing a notable growth. Koo has reached a total download figure of 50 million, which is substantial for a phone that launched 2 years ago.

"We're very excited to be crossing the 50 million download mark. This validates the demand for a multilingual social network built with an India-first product mindset of seamlessly including language-speaking Indians in daily thought sharing. Our rapid growth and adoption is a testimony to the fact that we are solving a problem faced by a billion Indians," said Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and co-founder of Koo, in a statement.

Koo reaches 50 million downloads

The mega milestone comes at a time when its biggest rival is undergoing a mega change. Twitter has been bought by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk earlier this year and the deal was completed last week. Musk has since then fired the CEO Parag Agarwal and the top management at Twitter. He also hired a couple of new recruits to help him build a Twitter 2.0.

Musk wants to change the direction in which Twitter goes. Twitter will now focus on free speech and have new rules for advertisers. Musk had also hinted at a new X app, although we don’t have any idea what this app is going to offer.

As for Koo, the multilingual microblogging app launched in 2020 with support for the Kannada and now supports Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese, Marathi, Bangla and Gujarati. Koo currently has 7500 prominent celebrities that also include several cabinet ministers and government officials as its subscribers. Some of the notable features include language keyboard, topics in 10 languages, language translations, edit functionality, and free self-verification.