Ellation, the parent company of popular anime streaming service Crunchyroll, has received a $22 Million investment from Otter Media, a company that has previously invested in Ellation before. Ellation looks to use the investment capital to expand its services, engineering capabilities, and to support the development of original content. Already, Crunchyroll has 20 million registered users and has projected to reach 750,000 paying subscribers by the end of 2015. Crunchyroll has also stated that users typically consume 1.5 Billion minutes of anime content each and every month!
Tom Pickett, CEO of Ellation had this to say about the success of Crunchyroll and its latest venture capital acquisition:
“From my perspective Crunchyroll is the leading example of a niche service that has gotten to scale. There are passionate fans willing to pay for a different experience. We’re trying to build video and product that super-serve a certain set of the audience. That’s fundamentally different from Hulu and Netflix, which are trying to go very broad with a thin layer of content. We’re like any other startup in the Valley. We just happen to get our capital from Otter Media. We need to raise money like anyone else; we just have a more predictable path to funds going forward.”
Crunchyroll, founded in 2006, recently announced a partnership with Sumitomo in order to create original programming. Crunchyroll is also known for streaming popular series such as Naruto Shippuuden and Sailor Moon Crystal. Most series can be watched for free, eventually, but most recent episodes are behind their affordable paywall.
