Many people know that India is a big market for entertainment companies, but what they don’t say is that the people there love to watch shows and films in their own languages. A recent poll by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a non-profit group, found that in 2024, more than 870 million Indians looked for videos, music, and other content in Indian languages. Of these, 57% chose content in their own languages.
A webtoons platform in India called Toonsutra is trying to take advantage of the fact that more people there are using the internet and want material that is more relevant to them. The company basically gets rights to print different comics from around the world, organises them into episodes, and translates them into Indian languages. Its Android and iOS apps let you read comics in English, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu right now.
“We saw that India didn’t have easy access to popular webtoons in short forms and multiple languages and thought this was a great chance.” “We want to make comics more popular in India and build fan bases around them,” Vishal Anand, co-founder and CEO, told Parhlo World.
Toonsutra makes money from in-app purchases: Some stories in each title are free, but users have to spend “coins” to get the rest. Users can buy “coins” outright, or they can earn them by reading more comics. A subscription plan and buying a show at a time are also being tried out by the company.
Anand said that more than 500,000 people use the app every month and that the number is steadily rising. That’s pretty good for a company that’s only been around for a little over two years, and investors like the chance to get into a market that isn’t well served yet: Toonsutra has raised $5.9 million so far from investors such as Sony Innovation Fund, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Google, Maiora Capital, and Funimation founder Gen Fukunaga. It has also received money from Crunchyroll co-founder Kun Gao, Lightspeed partner Jeremy Liew, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, and Rotten Tomatoes co-founder Patrick Lee.
Even though Google is a big name, they’ve been in this business before. The tech giant has invested in a number of Indian startups that are making content for the Indian market. These include the social network ShareChat, the lock screen app Glance, the audio platform Kuku FM, and Verse Innovation, which runs the short video platform Josh and the news app Dailyhunt.
Filmon Zerai, co-CEO of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which owns Nature, said that the company chose to invest in Toonsutra to broaden its approach in terms of both region and format. “Investing in Toonsutra helps us get known in the Indian market, which is a fast-paced and growing content market.” Zerai told Parhlo World, “Plus, the startup is an innovative business that uses new ways to make money to succeed in the market.”
Anand, who used to be the CPO of Dailyhunt, started Toonsutra in 2023 with Sharad Devarajan, who was the CEO of Graphic India, an animation company, and Liquid Comics, a digital entertainment business.
Dashtoons, which is backed by Matrix Partners India and uses an AI creation suite to make content, PocketFM, which is starting to make webtoons, and Pratilipi, which is backed by Krafton and has a platform for cartoons in Indian languages, are all competitors to Toonsutra.
Anand, however, said that Toonsutra is not trying to make a place where writers can turn their stories into comics. The company wants to rely on hand-picking titles and using AI to make them work in different languages instead. “We want to be more like Netflix than YouTube.” Because it’s hard to build a brand if people only think of three or four average titles when they think of you. Anand said, “We are trying to get high-quality, exclusive titles that people will trust to be on our platform.”
A relationship between the company and Google also gives it access to Google’s models, which it plans to use to translate and adapt comics to Indian languages, he said.
Also Read: Google Names a New Head of Operations in India
Analysts think that cartoons and webtoons will do well in India. For instance, the anime streaming service Crunchyroll has put a lot of money into India. Its subscription plans are tailored to Indian prices, and it even has cartoons dubbed in some Indian languages.
What do you say about this story? Visit Parhlo World For more.
