Microblogging platform Koo has held the April salary payment to all of its employees. The firm has cited financial constraints and an ongoing negotiations with potential strategic partners as the reasons.
The company spokesperson told the Financial Express that the salaries will be paid post conclusion of the partnership since it requires a fresh capital infusion
“We are in talks with strategic partners for Koo. This is taking longer than expected. In order to get the partnership through, we have ploughed in substantial personal funds also to meet past salaries. Salaries will continue to be paid post conclusion of the partnership since this partnership also includes a fresh capital infusion,” a Koo spokesperson stated.
As per Financial Express, the company has been witnessing an exodus of senior level employees in the recent months. This after Koo implemented a 40% salary cuts for those earning above Rs 30,000 per month.
Financial Express quoted people with knowledge of the matter and said that its talks with news aggregator platform Dailyhunt and short-video app Josh’s parent company VerSe Innovation for acquisition fell through.
Koo co-founder Mayank Bidawatka on Thursday took to Linkedin and said that the firm chose to cut the salaries instead of laying off people to survive the situation.
“It’s painful to cut salaries of people who’ve helped build the company. We had the option of either letting a good part of the workforce go or do a haircut for everyone. We did the latter. This way everyone could sustain without having to look for a job at a time when hiring across startups is at its all time low,” Bidawatka said in the post.
“Koo remains operational. It’s very well built and a fully automated product that needs little manual intervention to function,” he added.
Since its launch, the organisation has raised $50 million in funding. It is backed by Tiger Global, Accel, 3one4 Capital, Kalaari Capital, and Blume Ventures. Koo which aimed to pose a challenge to X, stopped customer acquisition campaigns since June 2022.
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