India’s homegrown webtoon comic app Toonsutra has onboarded industry legend, Gen Fukunaga as the company’s investor and advisory board member.
Fukunaga brings decades of experience in anime, pop-culture and streaming platforms, having previously founded Funimation which was sold to Sony Pictures Entertainment and acquired Crunchyroll to become the world’s leading anime digital platform, and one of the most successful streaming platforms globally. Goldman Sachs last year estimated Crunchyroll will account for 36 per cent of all profit in the Sony Pictures Entertainment segment, encompassing the conglomerate’s film and TV content businesses, by 2028.
Toonsutra has quickly established itself as a leading comic app in India in both the Apple and Android stores with over a million downloads of the app already. The company is founded by veteran media entrepreneurs, Sharad Devarajan and Vishal Anand who bring decades of Indian startup and media experience.
“The webtoon market is experiencing explosive growth globally, reminiscent of the anime boom we saw with Funimation,” said Fukunaga. “Toonsutra’s innovative approach to bringing world-class content to Indian audiences, combined with their deep understanding of local preferences, positions them perfectly to capitalise on this trend. I’m excited to bring my experience in building global fan communities to help Toonsutra become the definitive platform for digital comics and pop culture in India.”
“Gen Fukunaga’s decision to join Toonsutra as an investor and advisor is a testament to the immense potential of the Indian digital content market. His unparalleled experience in scaling anime and manga platforms will be invaluable as we continue to expand our offerings and enhance our user experience. With Gen’s guidance, we’re not just aiming to be India’s top webtoon app – we’re building a comprehensive ecosystem for digital storytelling that will reshape how Indian youth consume and interact with content,” said Toonsutra CEO Vishal Anand.
“Gen’s amazing experience in helping build one of the world’s most successful fandom platforms is invaluable to us as we pioneer the webtoon revolution for India. Toonsutra’s mission is to bring together a community of passionate fandom and pop-culture, catering to the largest youth market in the world – India’s 700 million+ mobile youth market,” said Toonsutra co-founder & executive chairman Sharad Devarajan.
Toonsutra is the only premium webtoon comics app in the region dedicated to catering to Indian audiences with Hindi, Tamil and Telugu language content offerings. The company has locked up exclusive partnership deals with some of the biggest global publishers and creators to bring over 550+ titles and 250,000 episodes of content into local Indian languages – the largest offering of premium, high-quality, webtoon comic content ever assembled for this market.
Toonsutra is backed by a leading group of investors including the Sony Innovation Fund; Maiora Capital, Kun Gao (Crunchyroll co-founder); Jeremy Liew (Lightspeed partner); Kevin Lin (Twitch co-founder ); Patrick Lee (Rotten Tomatoes co-founder); Holly Lui (Kabam co-founder); Benjamin Grubbs (CreatorPlus co-founder); Steve Chung (Americas, CJENM fmr. CEO); and others.
