AKIPRESS.COM - Can Indian microblogging app Koo beat Twitter? That's certainly the goal, according to co-founder Mayank Bidawatka, who says Koo expects to surpass Twitter's 25 million-strong user base in India this year.

It had touched 20 million downloads in India by the end of 2021, BBC reports.

"We are now available in 10 languages, including English. This year we'd like to cover all of India's 22 official languages," he told the BBC at the company's headquarters in the southern city of Bangalore, a tech hub.

Koo was thrust into the spotlight last year as an alternative to Twitter amid a row between the Indian government and the US microblogging platform.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government asked the platform to block allegedly incendiary accounts - Twitter complied initially and then restored them, citing "insufficient justification". The face-off continued as the government threatened legal action against the company's employees in India.