Webtoon Comic App Toonsutra Ropes In Funimation Founder Gen Fukunaga As Investor

Webtoon comic application Toonsutra has roped in animation OTT company Funimation’s founder Gen Fukunaga as its investor and advisory board member. 

Fukunaga is an American engineer and entrepreneur who served as the president of Funimation until 2019. Notably, in 2017, Funimation was sold to Sony Pictures Entertainment, following which Sony acquired Crunchyroll from AT&T in 2021.

He has been a producer and production manager for popular shows like Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018), Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007) and Steins; Gate (2011).

Toonsutra’s CEO Vishal Anand said that Fukunaga’s experience in scaling anime and manga platforms will contribute to the company’s expansion of offerings and enhancing user experience. 

Founded in 2022 by Shared Devarajan and Vishal Anand, Toonsutra is a Bengaluru-based webtoon comic platform available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. 

Devarajan is also the founder and CEO of the homegrown character entertainment company, Graphic India which has produced notable shows like Spider-Man India with Marvel, the Legend of Hanuman with Disney+Hotstar, Baahubali: Crown of Blood with SS Rajamouli. 

Anand is the former CPO of Dailyhunt a serial digital media entrepreneur, He was also the part of product leadership team at Amazon Web Services. 

It is pertinent to note that Toonsutra is backed by investors like Sony Innovation Fund; Maiora Capital, Crunchyroll’s cofounder Kun Gao, Lightspeed’s partner Jeremy Liew, and Twitch’s cofounder Kevin Lin, among others.

To date, Toonsutra has raised $1.1 Mn in funding. It competes against the likes of MangaToon, WenToon in the comic app segment.

According to a report by Business Research Insights, the global online comic market size is projected to touch $ 44 Bn by 2031.

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