Japanese entertainment tech startup Orange raises $19.5m funding to accelerate growth

Orange, a Japanese entertainment technology startup dedicated to the manga industry, announced a $19.5 million fundraising in pre-series A financing.

The financing round was led by Shogakukan, Globis Capital Partners, ANRI, SBI Investment, JIC Venture Growth Investments, Miyako Capital, Chiba Dojo Fund, Mizuho Capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and GFR Fund. The funds will be used to develop a localization product based on deep learning models and to launch their digital manga store in the summer of 2024.

Orange leverages deep-learning technology to address significant global market opportunities and historical development challenges within the traditional production of the Japanese art form.

The global manga market has shown substantial growth, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10%, and is expected to reach $42.2 billion market in 2030. This traditional entertainment in Japan has evolved into a global IP industry, reflecting an expanding audience for manga and its adjacent industries, such as anime.

However, only a fraction of works - according to Orange's research, approximately 2% of manga released annually in Japan - has been formally translated and made available in English, partly due to the difficult and lengthy translation process and the limited number of translators. Adding to this, the global piracy market for manga was $5.5 billion in 2022, which significantly harms the industry and the rights of wonderful creators and artists.

On challenges, Orange is breaking through the challenges by developing innovative technologies that enhance the capacity of localization and enable the worldwide simultaneous distribution of manga, working closely with several publishers.

Orange has been developing a manga-dedicated localization system since it was founded. It enables significant efficiencies in the localization process of manga by integrating cutting-edge computer vision and natural language processing technologies developed by a top-class deep learning engineering team.

Oranges' proprietary system uses its localization operation process, enabling a capacity for Japanese-to-English localization of up to 500 manga volumes per month. This is 5x more than the current production capacity of the whole localization market, according to Orange's estimates. Orange will also work on localizing manga into other languages, ensuring that manga fans across the world can enjoy manga in their native languages.

In the summer of 2024, the company will  launch a digital manga store named "emaqi" in the US. "emaqi" will include titles localized by Orange. It will feature recommendations suggested by AI technology and manga influencers to offer new and fun experiences to all manga fans in the US.

www.orange.inc

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