Linktree Closes Operations in India Amidst Ongoing Speculations

Linktree, a popular link-in-bio service used by many creators and businesses, has been inaccessible in India for several days. The reasons for this unexpected outage remain unclear, even to the Australian startup itself.

Over the past week, users in India have reported difficulties accessing Linktree, with some taking to X to voice their concerns. Initially, TechCrunch noted a message on the site indicating that it had been blocked by the Indian government. This notification was later replaced by a generic SSL protocol error. Additionally, the Linktree app has also been unavailable in the area.

Founded in 2016, Linktree reached unicorn status in 2022 and exceeded 50 million users by 2024. India is the platform’s fifth-largest market by traffic, accounting for 3.5% of its worldwide visits—approximately 7.3 million in July, as per Similarweb data shared with TechCrunch.

Linktree’s co-founder and CEO Alex Zaccaria told TechCrunch that the company is looking into the issue. However, he did not confirm if they have received any communication from Indian officials regarding the blockage.

The company later acknowledged on X that they are aware of the service interruption in India and are “investigating” the situation.

According to the Indian daily The Hindu, this outage is not limited to any single internet service provider and appears to affect all major networks.

Data from Similarweb shows that the U.S. is Linktree’s largest market, with 48.5 million visits, followed by Indonesia (32.3 million), Brazil (30.8 million), and the U.K. (9.4 million).

Emails sent to India’s IT and telecom ministries over the weekend did not receive any response.

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