Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO of KOO responds to user's personal data leak claim

Koo, the microblogging platform which won the government’s Digital India Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge last year has gained a lot of popularity in the past few days after government ministries and officials expressed support for the new platform.

However, Koo has run into trouble after claims of user data being exposed.

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French security researcher Robert Baptiste aka Elliot Alderson said that after spending 30 minutes on KOO, he found that the microblogging platform exposed sensitive information of users such as address, email, name, date of birth, marital status, gender and many more. Baptiste mentions in his tweet that Koo has a domain registered in the US with a registrant based in China.

Union Minister Piyush Goyal and some government officials heavily promoted Koo.

However, Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO of KOO said that the company would innovate, and always try and figure a way to monetise that is not a risk to users. He also admitted that it has a Chinese investor of Chinese money in the app surface.

Koo while talking to The Quint said, “Users enter their profile data on the app to be shared with others on the platform. That’s what’s displayed everywhere across the platform. While there have been false allegations of a data leak, it’s just commonly called the public profile page for all users to view!”

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“A set of Indian entrepreneurs are seen to be investing in Koo with Ashish Hemrajani from BookMyShow, Vivekananda from Bounce, Nikhil Kamat of Zerodha amongst various others entering the cap table of the company. It is a clear indication that the company is getting more and more Indian money into the company,” Koo Spokesperson told The Quint.