Sony Innovation Fund invests in webtoon start up firm 'Toonsutra'
Summary
"SIF has joined Toonsutra as one of the investors," said Sharad Devarajan, cofounder and CEO of Graphic India, while refusing to share details citing confidentiality. Graphic India is the countrys leading original character entertainment company.Along with Toonsutra, SIF has supported startups like Lokal, GetVantage, Impact Guru, Medfin, Medpay, Slice, WeRize, and Tricog. SIF is entirely funded by Sony and invests in early-stage businesses.We are excited about the potential of localized digital comics and webtoons as a powerful and dynamic storytelling medium in India, said Gen Tsuchikawa, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Sony Ventures Corporation . "That requires us to bring, for the first time, the best content in the world and solve some real problems like affordability and accessibility," he stated.The webtoon platform will offer international and local comic content across genres in English, Hindi, and other Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, and Marathi in an accessible vertical scroll format that optimized for mobile, according to Vishal Anand, cofounder and COO of Toonsutra and the former chief product officer of Dailyhunt. "The comics are being turned into sort of episodic content, and each episode is bite-sized and snackable," Anand said, adding that the platform is targeting the 700 million youth audience in the country.Besides aggregating the best-in-class content from leading publishers like Archie Comics, Valiant Comics, and Kenaz, the platform will also host content from leading global content creators like Stan Lee, Grant Morrison, Ryan Pagelow, Shekhar Kapur, Jeevan Kang, Mounica Tata, Rohan Chakravarty, and Alicia Souza.The platform also intends to fuel the local creator economy by providing them with a platform to tell their stories to a wider audience in multiple languages.