They say that emotions are best expressed in one’s native language – something India has abundance of. English is largely one which most urban Indians converse, interact, transact in – but interactions have a deeply personal, affable and fond association when done in a vernacular language.

China boasts of the largest number of Internet users in the world, with a whopping 54.3% of the population being Internet-savvy. However, its languages like Mandarin and Cantonese (two of the most widely spoken languages in the country) that are predominant forms of communication on their Internet – accounting for 19.4% of the most commonly used languages on the web. Other non-English languages like Arabic and Spanish are picking the pace now. While English undoubtedly continues to dominate the Internet globally, languages in closely-knit geographies with shared cultures are gaining popularity. This is also providing an immense opportunity for Internet users to become more comfortable conversing in their preferred language, through platforms available on the Internet. 

This is where India has a distinct advantage. A country of a billion plus, of whom 600 million are active Internet users. But for the first time in 2019, India’s rural Internet user base outnumbered that in urban areas by 10% - there were 277 million users in rural areas, compared to the 227 million in urban pockets. It is safe to assume that technology has managed to successfully limit the barriers between India’s diverse strata of society.

Entrepreneur Aprameya Radhakrishna, best known as the cofounder of one of the earliest ride sharing apps TaxiForSure, which was acquired by Ola, realized India is at an inflection point. Having had experience with developing ‘for Bharat', he started Vokal in 2017 along with Mayank Bidawatka, with the express intent of providing a Reddit/Quora-esque platform for Indians but in vernacular languages. With 20 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs), Vokal has been a resounding success in India, and has firmly established the market for local content in local languages.

Radhakrishna says, “Users on Vokal were keen to see a platform where they could express their feelings, much like Twitter is for English-educated individuals. Why should expression be restricted only to those who are well versed in English?” This led to the genesis of Koo early last year.

It is true that global platforms don’t necessarily provide an immersive language experience for Indian users – making it that much harder to find content and creators of this content. Moreover, necessary tools and data are attuned to the typical English user. Koo solves some of these issues by providing an immersive experience to language users. They are asked to choose a language of their choice. Every instruction post that is in that language. Koo makes it easy for the user to see a list of creators in that language, lending discoverability. Additionally, even creation tools are available in the native language, so users can either type in their native language or in English, while the keyboard automatically transliterates the English text to the native Indian language.

The strained ties with China that escalated last year led to the ban of several Chinese apps like TikTok, and fortify the clarion call for ‘aatmanirbharta’. The timing for launching Koo couldn’t have been better. It is now the largest community of Indian language speakers – the app has already crossed 2 million downloads and has about 1 million MAU. Koo is available in Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi and will be made available in 25+ other Indian languages too. Koo is available on Android, iOS and has a website too. Koo won the AatmaNirbhar App challenge in 2020 and PM Narendra Modi made a special mention of it in his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ episode in August 2020. Recently, Google voted Koo as India’s Best Essential App on the PlayStore for 2020. Prominent celebrities on the platform include Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology and Communications; BS Yediyurappa, CM of Karnataka; Dr Ashwathnarayan, Deputy CM of Karnataka; spiritual leader Sadhguru, veteran cricketers Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath, and actors Ashutosh Rana and Ashish Vidyarthi.

By developing a never-before seen ecosystem like this, Koo is prompting a sea-change in a conventionally uncontested English-first tech ecosystem. This is a prime opportunity for not only diversifying the nature of speech and expression in India, but also is a landmark moment for fortifying NLP capabilities and aggregating datasets in different languages. Radhakrishna agrees: “We’re basically applying first principle solving here; and a lot of what we do is in uncharted territory. The aim is to provide an avenue for rich and diverse views and communities to be built online; and this will undoubtedly bring in a new era of software development too – one that is more suited to a niche Indian audience.”