San Francisco and London-based AI-assisted comic creation platform, Dashtoon, is in the advanced stages of securing a new round of funding worth $10-12 million, according to Entrackr. This funding round will involve both new and existing investors, including Matrix Partners India and Stellaris Venture Partners.
“New investors along with existing ones Matrix Partners India and Stellaris Venture Partners are in late-stage talks to invest around $10-12 million in Dashtoon,” said a source requesting anonymity.
This marks the second funding round for the startup, which also has offices in Bengaluru. In November 2023, Dashtoon raised $5 million in a seed round led by Matrix and Stellaris, with additional participation from prominent angel investors.
Founded in December 2022 by Sanidhya Narain, Lalith Gudipati, and Soumyadeep Mukherjee, Dashtoon uses Generative AI to transform storytellers into comic artists. Its proprietary product, Dashtoon Studio, allows storytellers to create digital comics with ease.
Narain and Gudipati were previously part of the founding team of Pocket FM, an audio entertainment startup, where they contributed to building and growing the product in the US. Mukherjee has a background in scaling deep-tech teams at various startups, including working on cancer diagnosis solutions at Morphle Labs.
Dashtoon also offers a platform for published authors and aspiring writers to distribute and monetize their comics and graphic novels.
“The terms of the deal have been agreed upon and it’s likely to get materialized in a few weeks from now,” another source revealed. “Dashtoon is likely to be valued in the range of $50-60 million during the Series A financing.”
In November, the company announced that it began monetizing in October and expected to generate $15,000 in revenue during its first month. Dashtoon aims to increase its revenue to $100,000 per month over the next two to three months.
In the long term, Dashtoon aspires to become a global IP powerhouse by partnering with thousands of creators and readers.
The global comics market, dominated by Japanese Manga and Korean Webtoons, was worth $15.5 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach around $27 billion by 2032, according to Allied Market Research.