E104: Aprameya Radhakrishna (Co-founder & CEO, Koo)

Aprameya Radhakrishna is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Koo, an Indian microblogging and social networking app also known as the Indian Twitter. The company has raised a little over $50M from marquee investors such as Accel, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, 3one4 Capital, Tiger Global among many others. He founded his first venture, TaxiForSure with Raghunandan, which was acquired by OLA in 2015 for $200 million. In 2017, Aprameya launched his second venture, ‘Vokal,’ a user-generated content platform in Indian languages, with partner Mayank Bidawatka. After that, he realised that content in regional Indian languages was sparse, as most social media platforms carry an English-first approach and are built primarily for English speakers residing in urban centres. This gave him the idea of developing a multi-lingual micro-blogging platform for Indians, Koo, to communicate and connect with their linguistic and cultural communities. In July 2020, he won the Prime Minister’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. Episode Notes: 1. Intro (2:20) 2. Reflections on free expression in the context of microblogging and social media (3:50) 3. Growing Koo within different sections of the Indian populations (8:55) 4. How did the idea for Koo come about, and what factors aided the company's growth? (12:50) 5. Learning from building TaxiForSure that translates to building Koo (17:10) 6. The initial set of milestones that established the Koo brand (20:04) 7. Expansion during the pandemic (23:48) 8. Lessons from India's growth that will help Koo expand to the United States (26:47) 9. Creating richer community experiences (29:40) 10. Taking on Twitter (33:52) 11. Scaling values as businesses grow (37:44) 12. Creating a brand with a purpose (41:38) 13. How do investors perceive Koo’s growth in the coming years? (47:37) 14. Lessons learned as a serial entrepreneur in India (50:18) . . . Social Links: Koo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kooindia Aprameya Radhakrishna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aprameya Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash