Crunchyroll's masterplan to win over anime fans in India

Crunchyroll has announced more anime content and dubs for the Indian audience, which signals further investment in the Indian market.

Crunchyroll announced that it would add 40 new series and 200 hours of content by the end of 2023, many of which will be available in Hindi. These series would join Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Naruto Shippuden, and My Hero Academia already on the platform.

Moreover, the platform is making Hindi dubs of the popular Chainsaw Man available on July 29.

Crunchyroll will be introducing dubs in Tamil and Telugu by the end of the year, responding to the diverse linguistic preferences of Indian anime fans.

Mitchel Berger, Senior Vice-President, Crunchyroll said that while analysing the engagement levels between the English and Hindi dubs it was found that the Hindi version received approximately two and a half times more engagement.

“It just reinforced the importance of that local language and that authenticity. So, that's a strong signal back to us,” he added.

In an event held on Thursday in Mumbai, Rahul Purini, President of Crunchyroll, celebrated the screening of the Hindi Dub (S1 - E1 and E2) of Jujutsu Kaisen. The event was also attended by Tiger Shroff and Rashmika Mandanna, who shared their love for anime with fellow fans at the event.

Chainsaw Man is the hit dark fantasy anime series based on the widely popular and award-winning manga of the same name written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto (Fire Punch; Look Back; Goodbye, Eri) and serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump. The Hindi dub cast list can be found below.

Jujutsu Kaisen will premiere season 1 dubbed in both Hindi and Tamil beginning July 28, with three episodes airing every week.  Dubbed episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 will begin airing in the fall, but fans can catch new episodes subtitled in English streaming now on Crunchyroll.

Gita Rebbapragada, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Crunchyroll, said, "We believe this, not just for India, but globally, that the more services that have anime, the better. The more people that are watching anime, the better. We are targeting the age group of 16 to 24 years. Many younger people are watching it but if you have seen a lot of the content on our service, there is a lot of swords and blood and there can be a lot of action. So we really don't actively go after younger children. We plan to expand our dubs and so we work with aspiring voice actors to get the best fit for a particular show."

Speaking about Crunchyroll's marketing efforts in India, she said, “India is an incredibly diverse country that is fairly unique. Most countries don't have this number of languages and cultural differences between regions. So, I think our marketing approach is going to be very region specific. One thing that will be very similar to other markets is that our marketing strategy is very community-based so we spend a lot of time engaging with fans. Whether it's on our social channels, whether it's in events, whether it's in online forums, we are constantly doing outreach, responding, posting and engaging and we have always found that for anime you can't buy fans rather you have to earn them. And fans talking about us or the anime that they love to other fans is by far the most powerful and effective marketing that we do.”

She stated that the Crunchyroll team keeps taking feedback from the audience to make their experience better.

Rebbapragada said, "We are owned by two Sony entities and it is actually wonderful to be owned by a company that just fundamentally gets it and sees the potential and how amazing the stories are. So we do work very closely with them.”

"We have partnered with Sony to do distribution with us globally now so when we release films, we are releasing them in partnership with Sony. This has allowed us to leverage their expertise, scope and scale in territories while leveraging our anime knowledge and passion. It is really a one plus one equals three kind of situation," Berger.

Rebbapragada said that the platform gets content from Japan as quickly as possible onto the service which is important as people do not want to wait.

Over the last year, Crunchyroll has reduced subscription fees in India and made payments available in local currency, adding more library hours and series, making Hindi dubs available (in India and worldwide), attending India Comic Cons and more.

Rahul Purini, President, Crunchyroll, “India is a special place for Crunchyroll. It has the second-largest anime fandom on the planet and will drive 60% of the global growth in anime interest in the next few years. We see first-hand how much love there is for anime here, which is why we have been expanding our content catalogue. We now have over 500 titles, 3800 hours of content and 7500 episodes – making us the largest anime catalogue in India.”

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