India’s Koo in Brazil

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What is Koo?

• Founded by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka in March 2020, Koo is a multilingual microblogging platform, currently functional in over 100 countries and available in 11 languages.
• Koo was initially launched in Kannada and later added English and other Indian languages – Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese and Punjabi.
• Koo’s interface, which is yellow and white, is similar to that of Twitter. 
• It, too, enables users to categorise their posts with hashtags and tag other users in mentions or replies. 
• In May 2021, Koo introduced a new feature ‘Talk to Type’ that allows its users to create a post with the app’s voice assistant. Koo marks verified accounts with a yellow-coloured check mark.
• The platform recently announced four new features for the app, giving users more control over their posts. With this update, users will be able to save a Koo (which is the post), schedule Koos, and also save drafts – similar to Twitter.
•  Koo will now also allow users to upload up to 10 profile pictures as well.
• Among the alternatives that Twitteratis flying the coop look for, the microblogging platform Koo has gained huge traction, apart from sites like Mastodon and Tumblr.  
• This app was actively promoted by the Indian government as part of its ‘Make-in-India’ initiative. 
• Koo emerged as the winner in the ‘social networking’ category in the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge’ that was announced by the Prime Minister of India in May 2020 to create cutting-edge Indian apps.
• Since then, the Information Technology Ministry has used Koo to broadcast its differences from Twitter, which has fuelled the platform’s growth.  

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