Mumbai: Toonsutra a homegrown webtoon comic app said that it has locked up partnership deals with global publishers and creators to bring over 550+ titles and 250,000 episodes of content into local Indian languages. this it claims is the largest offering of webtoon comic content ever assembled for this market, in easy-to-read vertical scroll format optimised for mobile. International partnerships include Valiant Comics, Webtoon Factory, Kenaz, Archie Comics, Boom! Studios, Top Cow Productions and Liquid Comics.
It said that it s going from strength to strength in both the Apple and Android stores. The app said that over a million downloads have already happened.
Toonsutra explains that its 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. It is the only premium webtoon comics app in the region dedicated to catering to Indian audiences with Hindi, Tamil and Telegu language content offerings.
As the excitement for the global webtoon market continues to grow with the $2.7 billion IPO yesterday by Naver’s Webtoon Entertainment, the medium and fandom around these new storytelling comic platforms is finding new audiences and territories. The global webtoon market is projected to reach $60 billion by 2030, making it one of the highest growing new categories for media and content.
Toonsutra is founded by media entrepreneurs, Sharad Devarajan who is the Company’s Executive Chairman, and Vishal Anand, Toonsutra’s CEO.
Devarajan is also the Founder/CEO of Indian character entertainment company, Graphic India and brings over 25 years of comic and fandom experience, having created over 200 episodes of animation and 300 comics. He created Spider-Man India with Marvel; created and produced the #1 hit show, Baahubali: Crown of Blood, with SS Rajamouli; created and produced The Legend of Hanuman series with Disney+Hotstar which remains the #1 animated project in Indian history.
Anand, is a serial digital media entrepreneur and was formerly CPO of Dailyhunt where he was part of the core initial team managing their product and tech teams to scale the business into one of India’s most successful media platforms (currently with over 300 million users). Anand was also part of the product leadership team at Amazon Web Services.
“Toonsutra is not just an app, it’s a fandom community and a pop-culture movement. We’re bridging the gap between global storytelling and local audiences, creating a new language of entertainment that resonates with India’s digital-first generation. Our rapid growth shows that Indian audiences are hungry for the highest-quality, premium webtoon comic stories made available in their languages and in easily snackable mobile short episodes” said Toonsutra co-founder, chairman Sharad Devarajan.
“The initial success we are seeing for Toonsutra underscores a fundamental shift in content consumption patterns across the Indian youth. We’re not just riding the wave of digital transformation; we’re actively shaping it by combining cutting-edge technology with compelling storytelling. At Toonsutra we are creating an ecosystem where the biggest global creators and publishers can thrive by reaching entirely new regional language audiences, and Indian readers can discover new worlds with every scroll. Our mission goes beyond entertainment – we’re fostering a new era of creativity, community and creative expression in India,” added Toonsutra co-founder, CEO Vishal Anand.
In addition to award winning and bestselling comics from global creators, Toonsutra also has exclusive webtoon comics available based on franchises. These include the film ‘Baahubali’ and the streaming series, ‘The Legend of Hanuman’, and hundreds of Indian episodes from Indian comic publisher Graphic India.
Toonsutra is also backed by investors including the Sony Innovation Fund; Maiora Capital, Kun Gao (Co-Founder, Crunchyroll); Jeremy Liew (partner, Lightspeed); Kevin Lin (Co-Founder, Twitch); Patrick Lee (Co-Founder, Rotten Tomatoes); Holly Lui (Co-Founder, Kabam); Benjamin Grubbs (Co-Founder, CreatorPlus); Steve Chung (fmr. CEO of Americas, CJENM); and others.
