Latest News | Akatsuki Scouts for Partners for Content Localisation in India

New Delhi, Nov 3 (PTI) Japanese mobile game and anime producing company Akatsuki Inc on Tuesday announced the launch of its YouTube platform, Kumarba, in India and said it is scouting for partners to help develop localised content for the Indian market.

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Kumarba - which exceeded 200 million views in just one year of launch in Japan - will bring Japanese animation targeted at pre-schoolers in India. The content has been dubbed in English and engages with children through a series of upbeat nursery rhymes and educational songs with colourful animations.

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"In mid to long term, we want to co-create animation content with local Indian creators. As the first step, we decided to bring Japanese animation to India to test the water and establish the association with local partners. First we are targeting tier I, metros as the Kumarba is available in English," Yuki Kawamura, Head of Global IP Expansion at Akatsuki Inc, told PTI.

He added that the next step will be to expand to vernacular audiences in tier II cities and beyond by dubbing in local languages like Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

"We are planning to bring in a range of content from education to edutainment to interactive and engaging content. In the pipeline, we have more properties to come in. We want to distinguish (ourselves from others) by bringing rich story telling expertise from Japan," Kawamura said.

He noted that the current content lineup may not be a 100 per cent fit with Indian audiences.

"So we have to have localisation, not just in terms of language localisation but also on the content side. And to do that, we want to partner with local Indian creators and we are in the process of trying to explore those partnerships," he said.

Kawamura said AET Fund (Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund) has invested in various tech companies, and the learnings from those will be leveraged to create content for India.

Asked about monetisation plans, he said the company will look at merchandising as a revenue stream through one of the portfolio companies, Planet Superheroes.

The launch of the Youtube channel is the beginning of Akatsuki's plans to expand in the Indian kid's space. The company's aim is to accumulate learning by developing 3-5 animations across different themes, each with 10-13 episodes on OTT platforms including YouTube.

The pandemic has accentuated the pre-existing need-gap for educational animation content for kids. With schools closed, kids need virtual avenues to learn and consume content.

The Indian media and entertainment industry is expected to reach around Rs 3 lakh crore (USD 44 billion) by the end of 2024. Online animation companies in India are seeing an uptick in the number of users on their platforms and also a surge in the number of hours Indian users are spending watching kids content and animation in 2020.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)