Twitter rival Koo Retrenches 30 percent workers due to funding problem

Microblogging site Twitter’s Indian rival Koo has laid off about 30 percent of its workers in the last few months. This startup is incurring losses and is also struggling with lack of funding. Koo’s investors include American investment firm Tiger Global.

A Koo spokesperson told Bloomberg News that the firm has laid off about 260 workers, about 30 percent of its total workforce. “Market sentiment is focusing more on efficiency rather than growth,” the spokesperson said. Koo initially benefited from Twitter’s dispute with Indian authorities. Due to this, a large number of people including celebrities and officials shifted to this microblogging app. Technology companies have been facing difficulties for the last few months. The valuations of these companies have decreased. Along with this, investors are also staying away from these companies.

Recently Koo integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This will make it easier for users to prepare posts. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence bot that can generate content when prompted. Its popularity is increasing rapidly in the tech industry. Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of Koo, had said that users will be able to draft posts on various topics with the help of ChatGPT inside the app. He had said, “Users can write their views after asking about the trending news in their area.”

Koo will be the first platform to integrate technology with post creation capabilities. For this, users will be able to type their signals in the ChatGPT tool or use Koo’s voice command feature. About 20 percent of Koo users create content on the app and the integration of ChatGPT will help increase this figure. This feature will initially be provided to verified accounts on Koo and later it will be available to all users. Twitter is facing tough competition from Koo app. Last year, Koo became the second largest microblogging platform in terms of user downloads. It is the only Indian platform to compete with platforms like Gettr, Truth Social, Mastodon and Parler. It also introduced four new features for users.