BENGALURU: India’s tech CEOs and former cricketer Javagal Srinath have bought the stake of Chinese investor Shunwei Capital in Bombinate Technologies, the parent firm of the homegrown social media network, Koo.
Koo, which came into the limelight last month amidst a stand-off between the Indian government and Twitter, faced backlash over Chinese funding. On Wednesday, the Bengaluru-headquartered company said that Srinath, BookMyShow Founder Ashish Hemrajani, Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and Zerodha Founder Nikhil Kamat have participated in the round to buy out shares of Shunwei Capital.
Shunwei Capital had held a bit more than 9% in Bombinate Technologies. It is important to note that Koo has been one of the first companies in India to be proactive in its actions of cleaning up its cap table and has doubled down on its commitment to build an Aatmanirbhar app for India and the world, the tech firm said in a statement.
Data sourced from Traxcn revealed that Shunwei Capital had an 11% stake in 2018 in Koo's parent firm Bombinate Technologies, which was then running a vernacular Q and A platform, Vokal. The Chinese fund was the lead investor in the $5-million Series A funding round then.
Shunwei Capital's founding partner and chairman Jun Lei is also the CEO of smartphone brand Xiaomi that has a 23% market share in India and owns a stake in internet startups like Sharechat, Zest Money and Touch talent, WeWork India, and Hungama among others. Both Shunwei capital and Xiaomi also have a combined stake in firms such as Zomato, Meesho, Loan Tap, and Kuku FM.
“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,” Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and Co-founder, Koo said.
Aprameya’s venture has received massive support from India’s top union ministers including electronics and information technology minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, industries and commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, BJP chief JP Nadda amongst others.