Koo raises $30 million in series B funding complies with new intermediary guidelines

Homegrown microblogging platform Koo has raised $30 million in series B funding, led by Tiger Global with current investors Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream Incubator. IIFL and Mirae Assets are other new investors who have come on board the cap table with this round.

The fresh round of funding will be utilised mostly to strengthen engineering, item and neighborhood efforts across all Indian languages at Koo. Earlier, the platform had raised $4.1 million as portion of its Series A funding. Along with the current investors, Infosys veteran Mohandas Pai’s 3one4 Capital also had participated in the round.

Koo, which was launched last year just after it won the government’s Aatmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge in August 2020, has garnered almost 6 million downloads so far, becoming a important social media intermediary (SSMI). Social media firms possessing more than 5 million customers in India, are termed SSMIs and such firms are essential to have added compliance beneath the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code) Rules 2021. While international firms like Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram have sought more time to comply, Koo has currently complied with the new guidelines.

Koo’s Privacy Policy, terms of use and neighborhood recommendations reflect the needs of the guidelines as applicable to SSMIs. In addition, Koo has implemented due diligence and grievance redressal mechanism supported by an Indian resident chief compliance officer, nodal officer and grievance officer.

The app, founded by serial entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, aims to have one hundred million customers by the finish of this year. The nearby microblogging platform in Indian languages had gained prominence lately amid the standoff amongst Twitter and the government. Many best ministers as effectively as government departments have joined the platform and are routinely sharing updates on it.