Kasagi Labo receives $12m boost for anime push in SG

The Kasagi Labo team / Photo credit: Kasagi Labo

The global anime market is predicted to grow from US$25.8 billion in 2022 to US$62.7 billion a decade later.

Anime is big in Singapore too. A 2022 YouGov survey found that 52% of its over 1,000 participants have watched anime at least once. Of the 48% that haven’t done so, 21% can see themselves watching anime in the future.

To capture a piece of this market, Kendrick Wong – a serial entrepreneur who founded retail analytics platform Omnilytics and fashion app Shoppr – launched Kasagi Labo, a Singapore-based anime venture studio, in 2023.

Kasagi Labo mainly provides Japanese anime content through intellectual property licensing, distribution, and merchandising. These include original animations, limited edition merchandise, and virtual anime experiences.

In October last year, the company collaborated with Netflix and anime studio Genco to release mobile accessories based on the Pluto anime series.

Kasagi Labo recently raised US$12 million in a pre-series A round, boosting its total funding to US$20 million so far.

The round’s lead investor was Burda Principal Investments, a unit of the European media and tech giant Hubert Burda Media. CMT Digital, Superscrypt, Hashed, Sfermion, and Gold House Foundation also joined the fundraise.

Kasagi Labo will use the new funds to form partnerships and acquire existing anime IPs, it said in a statement. Wong also said that the partnership with Burda Principal Investments may help the venture studio enter new markets.

The company added that its plans align with trends stimulated by the rise of video-on-demand services. In 2020, global anime sales surpassed Japanese sales for the first time, which was attributed to an increase in anime distribution due to streaming, among other factors.

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