As per the Economic Times, Shunwei Capital, a Chinese venture capital firm has given up its minority stake in Bombinate Technologies Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of Indian homegrown mircoblogging site- Koo.
Their exit made way for former Indian cricketer Javagal Srinath, BookMyShow founder Ashish Hemrajani, Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath to participate in the buyout of Shunwei’s stake which was a little more than 9%.
Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and chief executive officer at Koo, said, “As stated earlier, we had been in discussion with Shunwei Capital to enable a smooth exit after it invested in our company 2.5 years ago while we were raising funds for Vokal. It has now fully exited the parent company Bombinate Technologies”.
After being promoted by several ministries of the government, the platform gained unprecedented following which also resulted in massive scrutiny. The app soon fell victim to controversies where Twitteratis discovered Shunwei, a Chinese investors presence in the company. However, the CEO in February clarified that Shuwnei held a single-digit stake and was on its way out.
BharatNet aims to provide high-speed internet to all the 2.5 Lakh Gram Panchayats.
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) March 15, 2021
Till now about 1.54 Lakh Gram Panchayats are connected with optical fibre.
Read on Koo: https://t.co/kM8Rslh10E pic.twitter.com/qwYfgMID6I
The company since then has been working on strengthening the platform to position itself as a safe and appealing replacement to Twitter.
Koo, the homegrown Twitter alternative shot to limelight after the Twitter vs Govt of India spat following the Republic Day riots wherein the microblogging giant refused to follow law of the land. After Twitter denied to take action against some accounts associated with press, leaders and journalists, government departments started to move to Koo and urged people to join the platform. The support for the app from government officials resulted in a spike that no one had anticipated.