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Exclusive: Matrix and Stellaris-backed Dashtoon in talks to raise $10-12 Mn

Entrackr · 5m

AI assisted comic creation platform Dashtoon is in talks to raise a new round from new and existing investors, sources aware of the development told Entrackr. This will be the second funding round for the San Francisco and London-based startup which has offices in Bengaluru. “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. In November 2023, Dashtoon had raised $5 million in a seed round led by Matrix and Stellaris with participation from prominent angel investors. Founded in December 2022 by Sanidhya Narain, Lalith Gudipati, and Soumyadeep Mukherjee, Dashtoon leverages Generative AI to turn storytellers into comics artists. Using its proprietary product Dashtoon Studio, storytellers can create digital comics. Narain and Gudipati were part of the founding team of audio entertainment startup Pocket FM and helped the company building and growing the product in the US. Mukherjee also built and scaled deep-tech teams at various startups including solving cancer diagnosis at Morphle Labs. Dashtoon also enables published authors or 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,” said another source who also requested anonymity. “Dashtoon is likely to be valued in the range of $5-60 million during the Series A financing.” Queries sent to Dashtoon, Matrix and Stellaris did not elicit any response. We’ll update the post in case they do. In November, the company said that it started monetising in October and expects to make $15,000 in revenue during the first month, with plans to grow to $100,000 per month over the next two to three months. In a long haul, Dashtoon aspires to be a global IP powerhouse by partnering with thousands of creators and readers. Currently, Japanese Manga and Korean Webtoons have been dominating the global comics market which was worth $15.5 billion in 2022 and is expected to be valued at around $27 billion by 2032, according to Allied Market Research.