'We're building in public, join us'

Koo is fully owned by Bombinate Technologies and domiciled in India. All data and associated servers are also run out of India. The team is headquartered in Bengaluru

New York: India's multilingual micro-blogging platform, Koo, is brushing aside as "teething issues" a sudden burst of criticism over data privacy and links to Chinese funding hitting its "10 month old" brand which has seen daily active user base explode nearly 30x since January and rapidly moving towards the 1 million mark.

"I am an Indian as a founder, my co-founder is an Indian and we are deeply connected with what we are building. And that's why the market even exists. We are a 10-month-old company. And there will be a few teething issues. We were taken by surprise by the kind of love that we've gotten from all the users in India. And we would want them to join us in this journey of building," said Koo Co-Founder Aprameya Radhakrishna.

On the other side, Koo critics have distilled their attacks around two themes: data privacy and the company's links to Chinese funding.

"You asked so I did it. I spent 30 min on this new Koo app. The app is leaking the personal data of his users: email, dob, name, marital status, gender," a hacker, who goes by the pseudonym Elliot Alderson, posted online.

Radhakrishna's case is that Koo, like any other digital-born product, will be built "iteratively", rather than arrive into the world fully baked. Koo's developers initially focused their attention on use cases where email wasn't the default mode of entry. "When the issues showed up, we fixed it immediately," he said.

"Factually incorrect," is the Koo team's response to interpretations of domain ownership. "Koo is fully owned by Bombinate Technologies Pvt Ltd and domiciled in India. All data and associated servers are also run out of India. The team is headquartered in Bengaluru," the Koo team explained. As on date, Koo counts Accel Partners, 3one4 Capital, Blume Ventures, and Kalaari Capital among its investors.

Shunwei, the lone global venture capital firm with China links in the Koo structure, has "committed to exiting the company," said Radhakrishna. Koo expects to close the issue in "about a month". Shunwei had invested in an earlier product from the same team, called Vokal.

"Due to the increased restrictions on Chinese investors in India, the exit procedure was working through the required checks and clarifications before being completed," Radhakrishna said.