Toonsutra, the India-focused mobile webtoon startup which has been incubating in stealth mode, announced it closed an oversubscribed pre-seed round for US 1.1 million dollars. The new startup was incubated at a leading character entertainment company, Graphic India, and was founded by media entrepreneur, Sharad Devarajan.
Toonsutra is building India’s first Webtoons meets Web3 platform with a mission to become India’s new storytelling home for disruptive creators across the country to experiment, innovate and create engaging webtoon comic stories and digital collectibles for India’s 650 million+ mobile youth market.
The funds came from an acclaimed group of global investors and entrepreneurs including Rotten Tomatoes co-founder Patrick Lee, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Crunchyroll co-founder Kun Gao, Lightspeed Venture Partners partner Jeremy Liew, Kabam co-founder Holly Lui, 9GAG co-founder Ray Chan, Publicis Group former chief growth officer Rishad Tobaccowala, Start Media founder Michael Maher, Dailyhunt former chief product officer Vishal Anand, CreatorPlus co-founder Benjamin Grubbs, filmmaker George Nolfi, co-founder Sandeep Kumar Sood, and others.
In addition to some of the biggest comic book libraries from around the world, the platform will showcase and promote emerging rising star creators across India and give them a home to tell their stories. The TOONSUTRA app will feature a wide range of content for audiences across superhero, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, Bollywood, mythology, action, and more.
Toonsutra founder Sharad Devarajan said, “TOONSUTRA will become India’s new storytelling home for disruptive creators across the country to experiment, innovate and create powerful new webtoon comic stories and web3 collectibles and experiences, Webtoon platforms have become an explosive phenomenon across Asia with top webtoon apps cumulatively reaching over 70 million monthly users and over 100 billion views a year. For the first time, we want to make a webtoon app dedicated for Indians to spark a mobile comic and Web3 collectible revolution.”
The new startup was incubated at Graphic India, the country’s highest quality comic book producer and the creators of hit animated shows like Baahubali: The Lost Legends; Chakra The Invincible; and The Legend of Hanuman. Graphic India’s short-form video formatted Audio Comics and Motion Comics has already broken over 200 million cumulative views across third-party platforms in India, proving the growing demand for digital comics in the market.
