'Little yellow bird' Koo's flight ends as merger talks fail

Explored partnerships with multiple internet companies

- ARYAMAN GUPTA

Beleaguered microblogging platform Koo, once seen as a home-grown rival to social media giant X (formerly Twitter), has shut down its operations, the company's founder Aprameya Radhakrishna said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

"Here's the final update from our end. partnership Our talks fell through, and we will be discontinuing our service to the public. We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses, but these talks didn't yield the outwanted," come we Radhakrishna said.

He added that most interested parties "did not want to deal with user-generated content and the wild nature of a social media company. A couple of them changed priorities almost close to signing".

Unverified reports suggest Verse Innovation, which owns Dailyhunt and ShareChat, was in talks to acquire Koo.

"While we would've liked to keep the application (app) running, the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high, and we've had to take this tough decision," Radhakrishna said.