App flap: Twitter’s India troubles give local rival Koo a lift

Koo has a fraction of the users of Twitter but has surged recently after endorsements by Indian politicians.

An Indian alternative to Twitter Inc. is experiencing a surge in popularity after the U.S. microblogging site clashed with the country’s government, a sign of the growing political challenges for social media services. The Koo app, which lets users send out tweet-like posts in English as well as seven Indian languages, shot to prominence after the San Francisco company got into a weeks-long standoff with the Indian government over blocking certain content. Prominent officials — including Piyush Goyal, the minister of industry and commerce — defected to Koo and urged supporters to follow suit. That led to a 20-fold explosion in daily users, overwhelming the servers and 10-person engineering team at parent Bombinate Technologies Pvt. Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and chief executive officer, said the Bangalore-based startup’s primary goal is not political at all, but rather to expand the reach of social media to a broader demographic.