India’s Koo Eyes Nigeria Market After Country Bans Twitter

The Nigerian government banned Twitter indefinitely on 4 June.

KOO logo

(Photo: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

After the Nigerian government indefinitely suspended Twitter, India's microblogging platform Koo is now looking for an opportunity to enter the social media space of the African country.

"@kooindia is available in Nigeria. We're thinking of enabling the local languages there too. What say? (sic)" wrote the company's co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna Twitter on Saturday, 5 June.

Several Twitter users have encouraged the expansion.

Twitter on Wednesday, 2 June, deleted a tweet from Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari account, that was widely perceived as offensive, for violating its rules, CNN reported.

On 4 June, Nigeria's Ministry of Information and Culture stated that Twitter had been "suspended indefinitely" because of "persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria's corporate existence".

Meanwhile, the Bengaluru-based social media platform witnessed a rise in the number of users after tensions between the Indian government and the US-based social media platform escalated over the blocking of accounts and content related to the farmers’ protests.

Several politicians, such as IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Chief Minister of Karnataka BS Yediyurappa, and Minister of Railways and Commerce Piyush Goyal, and NITI Aayog, have asked their followers to use the app.

KOO, The ‘atmanirbhar’ app

Koo, which launched in 2020 and has been recognised as one of the ‘atmanirbhar’ apps by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, is being dubbed by many as an alternative to Twitter.

Built by entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, Koo is a microblogging platform through which users can communicate in their mother tongue via text, audio, and videos. Its interface is available in eight Indian languages, namely Hindi, English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bangla, and Gujarati. Soon, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi and Assamese will come up, its website says.