- The list of investors who bought out Shunwei Capital’s stake includes Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath.
- Bombinate Technologies, the parent company of Vokal and Koo, had a 9 percent interest in Shunwei Capital.
- After the Indian government’s standoff with Twitter, Koo, the microblogging site created by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, saw an increase in users.
As it sails the ‘Made in India’ bandwagon, Bombinate Technologies, the parent company of Vokal and Koo, has shown the door to one of its early investors, China’s Shunwei Capital.
Although the company did not include financial information, it did reveal that Shunwei Capital owned a little more than 9% of Bombinate Technologies.
Startups have been wary of the Indian government’s regulations on Chinese investors and crackdown on Chinese applications in light of the Indo-China border conflict. Indian startups funded by Chinese investors have faced criticism on social media.
Chinese investors such as Tencent and Alibaba, who have been big investors in India’s startup ecosystem in the past, are now looking for ways to exit their investments. One of BigBasket’s early investors, Alibaba, is expected to profit from the Tata Group’s reported acquisition of Indian grocery startup BigBasket.
In Koo’s case, Indian entrepreneurs and startup ecosystem leaders assisted in the buyout of the Chinese investor. Shunwei Capital’s stake was bought out by former Indian cricketer Javagal Srinath, BookMyShow founder Ashish Hemrajani, Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath.
Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka created Koo, a microblogging site that is available in English, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, and Malayalam.
In a quote, Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and Co-founder of Koo, said, “We had been in discussion with Shunwei Capital to allow a smooth exit after it invested in our company 2.5 years ago while we were raising funds for Vokal and have now completely exited the parent company Bombinate Technologies.”
The recent standoff between Twitter and the Indian government, which demanded that the social media giant ban those handles, was a boon for Koo in India.
Koo raised $4.1 million in Series A funding from 3one4 Capital, Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures, and Dream Incubator earlier this month.
