Tiger Global-backed Koo lays off employees to streamline business

Microblogging platform Koo has laid off employees across operations to manage costs and streamline business. While the company didn’t share the exact number, this comes at a time when there is an industry-wide funding shortage especially in the growth and later stages.

A Koo spokesperson confirmed the layoffs to Moneycontrol, but did not specify the exact number saying it’s smaller than it has been mentioned by a media publication. As of now, Koo overall headcount is over 360 employees.

According to an Inc42 report, who reported it first, around 40 employees were laid off from operations and back-end teams, mainly in Delhi and Northern region offices.

The Koo spokesperson added that the company’s workforce was streamlined to meet current business requirements as Koo is currently going through a rapid growth phase.

“Koo is at a phase of rapid growth as we proudly steer digital inclusion for native language speakers. We recently attained a major milestone of 45 million downloads, growing 10x in the last 2 months. The growth that we are witnessing in our business is reflected in our employee strength of 350+ people strong,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added, “We continue to recruit talent especially as far as engineering and machine learning teams are concerned. Our workforce is streamlined to ensure it is aligned to the current business requirements. As a people-first company, we appreciate the talent and contributions of each of our associates, which is critical towards making Koo – India’s most loved social media company, and in accelerating our journey towards 100 million downloads.”

Founded in 2020, by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, Koo had gained popularity as a desi vernacular alternative to global microblogging site Twitter. Koo’s investors include Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, Dream Incubator, IIFL, Mirae Assets, among others. Moneycontrol