Is Koo App The Next Twitter?

Ever seen this logo? You must have if you are an active social media user. This is a homegrown social media platform which is known as Koo. A few months back, when the government banned hundreds of Chinese apps, the ones “Made in India” started getting popularity for promoting the Indian government’s AatamNirbhar Bharat vision and Koo is one of those apps. 

What is Koo?

Koo is a Twitter-like microblogging platform for Indian language speakers. It lets users, communicate in their mother tongue via text, audios, and videos. This app is meant for people to express thoughts, opinions, and strike a discussion on trending topics. Koo has gained immense popularity within a short period. 

Key Highlights:

• It supports different Indian regional languages.
• You can express your views and opinions on various topics and follow other users on the platform.
• This app came into existence from the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge
• It can be used on both Android and iOS devices. 
• Koo gained popularity after the Indian government locked horns with Twitter over the suspension of a few accounts.

The brain behind this app?

Koo is created by Aprameya Radhakrishna (who co-founded Taxi For Sure) and Mayank Bidawatka (who has co-founded RedBus, The Media Ant anf Goodbox) back in March 2020. The best thing about the app is that it is available in various Indian languages such as Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya, and Assamese. This gives users a better way to express themselves in the language of their choice.

Koo App is the Voice of India in Indian Languages- reads the website bio.

 

The government had a Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge which had many participants and Koo was the winner of this challenge, since then Koo is considered as an AatmaNirbhar App. 

Koo is getting wordwide recognition after getting promoted by prominent Indian political figures. Earlier it had 1.5 million active users. However last month, the number of users on the App reached 3 million. This is because many Union ministers like Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal, and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Shiv Raj Singh Chauhan left Twitter to support Koo.

Why Koo is in News?

Koo became popular when the government of India openly expressed its displeasure with Twitter on late agreement with its emergency orders to remove the hashtag "farmer genocide" and all similar content from its platform.

While the app was launched in early 2020, its participation and the subsequent winning of the government's Aatmnirbhar App Innovation Challenge brought it under the spotlight. Google PlayStore has announced Koo as the winner of the Best Apps of 2020 in the Everyday Essentials category from India.

Since the users of the app have been increasing a French ethical hacker Robert Baptiste, who goes by the name Elliot Alderson on Twitter tweeted saying that he spent 30 minutes on the recently launched app, Koo and was able to access sensitive data such as email IDs, addresses, passwords, etc. He posted screenshots of his finding on Twitter. He also said Koo has some form of Chinese involvement as well. Responding to the claims, Koo's co-founder Aprameya RadhaKrishna said users have voluntarily put their data on display. User data has not been breached in any form and tweeted that the news about data leak is being spoken unnecessarily. However, Baptiste responded to Radhakrishna's claims and called it 'Lies'. Koo has been also accused of cloning Twitter's look and feel. Koo has a yellow bird as the mascot, which is very similar to Twitter's blue one.

Packing Up

So, this was all about this made-in-India app and its rise to prominence. I must say Koo can woo the world.  You should check out this Aatamnirbhar Bharat App. 
Do you think Koo can give Twitter a tough fight? Will you prefer Koo over Twitter? Will the vocal for local sentiment contribute to Koo mania? Please do write your views in the comment section below.