Koo site that Indian ministers are moving to has Chinese investor, founder admits
The founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna said that Chinese venture capital firm Shunwei Capital will soon be bought out by other investors.
Microblogging app Koo, which has gained traction in the last few days amid the Indian government’s tussle with Twitter, has a Chinese investor that is on its way out, the platform’s Chief Executive Officer Aprameya Radhakrishna told CNBC-TV18 in an interview on Wednesday.
Koo caught public attention after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology used the platform on Wednesday to express “strong displeasure” against Twitter for not complying with its orders to take down certain content.
CEO Radhakrishna, who is also one of the co-founders of Koo, said that Chinese venture capital firm Shunwei Capital was a “very small stakeholder” in the company and that they were exiting after being bought out by other investors.
“Shunwei [Capital] had invested in the earlier brand Vokal,” Radhakrishna told the news channel. “We have pivoted our business and focused on Koo..they [Shunwei] are on their way out. They are being bought out by other people. We are a truly Atmanirbhar Bharat app.”
On Wednesday, Radhakrishna took to Twitter to reiterate that Shunwei Capital was a “single digit shareholder” in the company and will be “exiting fully”.
Koo has so far raised around $4.1 million (Rs 29.85 crore) from investors including Infosys veteran Mohandas Pai’s 3one4 Capital, Kalaari Capital, and Blume Ventures, according to Moneycontrol.
In its LinkedIn profile, Shunwei Capital says that it is a privately-owned venture capital company that was founded in 2011 in Beijing. The company claimed that its investment portfolio includes firms like Xiaomi, Ninebot and ShareChat.
Koo leaks personal data?
On Wednesday, French security researcher and ethical hacker Robert Baptiste, who uses the pseudonym Elliot Alderson, on Twitter said that he found Koo was exposing sensitive information of its users, such as email addresses, names, gender.
In a series of tweets, he also posted screenshots suggesting that the platform had a domain registered in the United States with the registrant based in China.
However, Radhakrishna countered people who posted the screenshots showing the Chinese domain registrant, saying that the information was “completely false”. He replied with screenshots showing that the platform’s Internet Protocol, or IP location was located in Mumbai.
Koo’s Chinese connection, or the lack of it, holds significance as the Indian government has been increasingly strict on apps developed in the neighbouring country, banning several of them, in the wake of the ongoing border standoff in the eastern Ladakh region of the Line of Actual Control. The government, in its order, had said that the apps were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”.