Chinese investor Shunwei Capital exits parent company of Twitter-clone Koo

 

Chinese Venture Capital firm Shunwei Capital has exited Bombinate Technologies, the parent company of Koo, after existing investors and a clutch of prominent individuals bought out its minority stake, the company said on Wednesday.

Prominent Indians including Former Indian Cricketer Javagal Srinath, BookMyShow Founder Ashish Hemrajani, Udaan Co-Founder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart Chief Executive Officer Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Zerodha Founder Nikhil Kamath participated in the round to buy out shares of Shunwei Capital.

Shunwei Capital had held a little over 9 per cent in Bombinate Technologies.

"Existing investors along with a bunch of individuals have bought out Shunwei Capital's minority stake in Bombinate Technologies, the parent company of Vokal and Koo," the statement said but did not divulge financial details of the transaction.

Commenting on the development, Javagal Srinath, former Indian cricketer and fast bowler described Koo as "one of India's most talked-about social media platforms".

"I am very happy to be backing Koo...The fact that they are building a platform to bring the voices of Indian language audiences onto the internet is commendable and as an Indian, I extend my support to them wholeheartedly," Srinath said.

Koo had seen a massive surge in user base as Union ministers and government departments endorsed the homegrown microblogging platform amid a spat with Twitter, earlier this year.

Aprameya Radhakrishna, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Koo said, "As earlier stated, 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 and have now fully exited the parent company Bombinate Technologies."

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