Dashtoon Raises $5 Million in Funding to Launch Generative AI for Comic Creation
In Brief
Dashtoon has announced a $5 million seed funding round, led by Matrix Partners India and Stellaris Venture Partners.
Dashtoon, a San Francisco and London-based startup founded in December 2022, has announced a $5 million seed funding round, led by Matrix Partners India and Stellaris Venture Partners, to make cutting-edge technology accessible to storytellers worldwide.
The platform utilizes generative AI to turn storytellers into comic artists. The company said that the new funding round will enable deepen AI research, progress product development and content production in the coming months.
Dashtoon’s co-founder and CEO, Sanidhya Narain, said, “Content businesses have largely capitalized on technology for distribution.”
“We at Dashtoon believe it’s time to bring that technological edge to content creation itself. Generative AI will not only level the playing field for storytellers worldwide but will also meet the diverse tastes of global consumers,” Narain added.
The company’s vision is to transform the digital comics landscape in the same way that high-quality camera phones and platforms like Instagram and TikTok transformed the world of photography and short-form videos.
According to the firm, the aim is to make its technology accessible to storytellers worldwide, offering them the tools to create, distribute, and monetize their unique comic creations. Dashtoon is founded by Sanidhya Narain, Lalith Gudipati and Soumyadeep Mukherjee.
Prior to their venture with Dashtoon, Narain and Gudipati had served on the founding team of Pocket FM. In this capacity, they were responsible for spearheading the expansion of the India-based audio content platform within the United States.
Boosting Comic Creation Economy
Digital comics have witnessed a vibrant creator economy in markets like Japan and Southeast Asia, where Japanese Manga and Korean Webtoons have asserted their dominance over the global comics market, nurturing billion-dollar intellectual properties.
Until now, creating comics required hard skills such as sketching, coloring, and lettering, creating significant entry barriers for many aspiring creators in other parts of the world. These existing creator ecosystems have been built over decades, making it difficult to replicate them globally.
Dashtoon aims to change this paradigm by providing a platform that empowers storytellers of all backgrounds and skill levels.
With its platform – Dashtoon Studio, the company aims to offer unparalleled character consistency, fine control over image composition, and streamlined comic creation workflows.
It includes an extensive character library and the capability to train and monetize unique characters, thereby enabling the production of professional-quality, engaging content ready for global consumption.
One of the features of Dashtoon Studio is its ability to significantly reduce the time and effort required to create digital comics.
For example, creators can upload their storyboards and, with the assistance of AI, generate images with deterministic and consistent output in just a few minutes.
This innovative approach has the potential to revolutionize the industry, with what used to take 40-50 hours to create an episode now being achieved in a mere 5-6 hours.
According to the firm, it aims to add multi-modal capabilities to generate storyboards and dialogues using AI, further reducing episode creation time to less than an hour.
There will be access to a broader range of content that is not limited to Japanese manga or Korean webtoons and will be culturally contextual and curated to cater to individual preferences, it added.
Lalith Gudipati, COO and Co-founder of Dashtoon states, “Dashtoon’s mission is to create a world where the art of comic creation is as widespread and culturally ingrained as it is in places like Japan and Korea.”
Webcomics – the Next Wave of Growth
The seed funding secured by Dashtoon will play a pivotal role in advancing the company’s AI research, progressing product development, and expanding content production in the coming months.
Naman Lahoty, Principal at Stellaris Venture Partners, highlights the growth of content consumption on mobile phones and predicts that webcomics will be the next wave of growth.
Dashtoon, with its mix of content, tech, and global user acquisition experience, is expected to lead this charge, disrupt the traditional content creation model, and usher in a new era of personalized, diverse, and democratized content creation and consumption.
Aakash Kumar, Managing Director at Matrix Partners India, summed it up saying:
“In the coming years, the business of content will undergo many transformations, and the most important of those is going to be creation getting democratized and boundaries between PGC and UGC getting blurred. We are excited to be partnering with Dashtoon on their journey to shape this future vision of content.”
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Kumar is an experienced Tech Journalist with a specialization in the dynamic intersections of AI/ML, marketing technology, and emerging fields such as crypto, blockchain, and NFTs. With over 3 years of experience in the industry, Kumar has established a proven track record in crafting compelling narratives, conducting insightful interviews, and delivering comprehensive insights. Kumar's expertise lies in producing high-impact content, including articles, reports, and research publications for prominent industry platforms. With a unique skill set that combines technical knowledge and storytelling, Kumar excels at communicating complex technological concepts to diverse audiences in a clear and engaging manner.
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Kumar is an experienced Tech Journalist with a specialization in the dynamic intersections of AI/ML, marketing technology, and emerging fields such as crypto, blockchain, and NFTs. With over 3 years of experience in the industry, Kumar has established a proven track record in crafting compelling narratives, conducting insightful interviews, and delivering comprehensive insights. Kumar's expertise lies in producing high-impact content, including articles, reports, and research publications for prominent industry platforms. With a unique skill set that combines technical knowledge and storytelling, Kumar excels at communicating complex technological concepts to diverse audiences in a clear and engaging manner.
