Dailyhunt to acquire India’s X alternative Koo: Report
Bengaluru-based news content aggregator Dailyhunt is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire Indian start-up Koo, an alternative to social media platform X (previously Twitter). The deal could be finalized in about three weeks. Koo’s founder, Mayank Bidawatka, had expressed the company’s interest in fundraising or forming a strategic partnership to scale its operations
Bengaluru-based news content aggregator Dailyhunt is in advanced stages to acquire Indian start-up Koo, TechCrunch reported citing sources on Wednesday.
The deal may be finalised in as many as three weeks, the report said. Koo, which has been touted as an alternative to social media platform X, which was previously known as Twitter.
Koo founder Mayank Bidawatka in September 2023 had said that the company was looking for fundraising opportunities or tie-up with a strategic partner that would help the company scale-up its operations.
“The next phase for Koo is to build scale and that will happen with either funding or through a strategic partnership with someone who already has scale,” he said. With a platform that is scale ready, Koo can outshine competitors with the right push on growth, Bidawatka had claimed then.
“We still believe that a microblog built for the native language speakers is the most inclusive way to take microblogging to the larger world. 80% of the world speaks a native language, other than English , and they too deserve a language first platform to express themselves and connect better,” he said.
Bidawatka said Koo’s initial “stable state” plan was to scale more before generating revenue, but it got caught in “sour market timing” and had to switch gears from a growth trajectory to a revenue-generating engine. “With just 6 months more on our trajectory, we would have beaten Twitter in India,” he said.
The company in 2023 had integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT in a bid to help users create posts easily. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence bot that can create prose in response to prompts and has set off a tech industry craze over generative AI.
In FY23, DailyHunt reported a 57% on-year increase in revenue to Rs 1,809 crore.
Established in 2009 under the name Newshunt, the Bengaluru-headquartered content startup underwent a rebranding in 2015 and is now known as DailyHunt. The platform gathers content from newspapers and websites in various Indian regional languages such as Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, and Bhojpuri.
DailyHunt offers additional services, including original video content in Hindi and Telugu, as well as complimentary live TV streaming in numerous regional languages. The company asserts that its machine-learning technologies facilitate intelligent content curation, tracking user preferences to provide real-time and personalized content.
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CREDIT: – The Economic Times
