Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 29 July 2021: INKR, the first-of-its-kind digital comics platform, today announced a new round of Pre-Series A funding of $3.1M led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. Investors Stu Levy, Founder & CEO of TokyoPop, and VI Management also participated in the round.

The funding will be used to increase its content catalog, further expand its product development and marketing to grow user base, and for talent acquisition.

“Comics have the power to transport us to entirely new worlds, teach enduring values, and nurture our imagination. We believe that everyone should be able to read any comic even if they do not know the language. In reality, not everyone can enjoy comics easily and officially due to the prohibitively high cost of localization and complex licensing process for content creators and publishers. So we want to change that,” said Ken Luong, CEO, and Co-Founder of INKR.

Today, INKR currently works with over 70 leading comic publishers and creators including Image Comics, Kodansha USA, Kuaikan, Mr. Blue, TokyoPop. Using INKR proprietary technology, any reader can have access to any of our over 800+ comics on any device and localized to any language. Content creators and publishers are also able to share their content at speed and are more cost-effective.
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The platform comprises of:

• INKR Comics App for Readers - Access to over 800+ localized manga, manhua, webtoon, to graphic novels to readers from leading content creators and publishers for any device.
• INKR for Publishers - A suite of tools for publishers and content creators to support global distribution to millions of comic readers in over 100 countries and regions, analytics, and flexible monetization plans.
• INKR Localize - A service that lets publishers localize content at speed to market in a cost-effective way. The proprietary AI localization technology has helped partners such as Kuaikan Manhua and Mr. Blue to localize thousands of comic chapters from Chinese and Korean into English.

“Ken, Hieu, and Khoa’s sheer passion and fanaticism for making comics universal has translated into a company and suite of products that is transforming the entire industry and will completely change how comics are localized, distributed, and consumed worldwide. Its proprietary AI-driven platform is addressing pain points for creators and publishers who need to go digital and global - localizing for many languages quickly and cost-effectively while also helping them improve reach and readership through analytics and intelligent personalized feeds. We look forward to partnering with them to quelch the huge demand for translated comics globally,” said Justin Nguyen, Partner of Monk’s Hill Ventures.