After the Centre rebuked Twitter for not complying with its orders to take down certain content, home-grown social media app Koo started witnessing a surge with top politicians flocking to it.
After Twitter refused to block accounts of journalists, politicians, and activists tweeting on farmers’ protests, a push has been started by many to an Atmanirbhar social media app. Now, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and other government departments have verified handles on Koo.
It is a microblogging service just like Twitter where users can express their opinions. It has been developed by Aprameya Radhakrishna, who is the co-founder and CEO. Koo was launched in March last year and it won The Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge. It has features that are quite similar to Twitter. It allows users to follow individuals and browse through a feed. Users can write messages in text or share them in audio or video formats. It has Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Tamil, and English language options, with other coming soon. It also allows people to express their opinions in their local languages. Messages can be written up 400 characters and are called “Koo”.
As it has gained around three million downloads in the last 24 hours or so, the app has also started attracting scrutiny.
According to a French security researcher, it is not very safe, and currently, it is leaking a lot of sensitive user information including email ID, phone numbers and date of birth. French cybersecurity researcher Robert Baptiste, popularly known as Elliott Anderson on Twitter, has looked at Koo and has found that it is leaking some user data. Baptiste earlier grabbed headlines after highlighting several vulnerabilities in the Aadhaar system. He has also highlighted a number of security bugs and vulnerabilities in other tech services.
Talking about the Chinese investment, it’s co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna distanced the company from Chinese investor Shunwei Capital, saying that they had invested more than two years ago when it was building its first product Vokal, and that the investor would be exiting fully, with other investors buying out their stake.
The company in a statement said, “It takes pride in being an Indian company with Indian founders and in being registered here. The recent investment in Bombinate Technologies Koo’s parent company was by Mohandas Pai of 3one4 Capital, an Indian investor. Shunwei, a single-digit shareholder that had invested in Vokal, another start-up of ours which answers user questions in Indian languages, will be exiting fully.
Bombinate is the parent company of Vokal and Koo.” Koo is a free app available on both Android and iOS. Alternatively, users can head to Google Play and search for “Koo”. The app is named “Koo: Connect with Indians in Indian Languages” on Google Play. It is named just “Koo” on the App Store with Bombinate Technologies Private Limited as the provider.
