Anime streaming giant Crunchyroll makes big push in Indian market

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

Ashwath Nair’s obsession with anime started in the early ’90s, when the anime show Robotech first aired on an Indian television channel. Over the years, he fell in love with the diverse genres, complex storylines, cinematography, and the unique art style of anime.

But at the time, Indian TV channels aired only a couple of hours of anime per day, and choices were limited to mainstream titles. Fans like Nair had no option but to rely on piracy websites. “We started sailing the high seas and being absolute online pirates,” Nair, now a 36-year-old photographer and filmmaker, told Rest of World.

Over the next decade, piracy grew as anime floundered on Indian TV due to expensive licensing for such content, objections to its mature themes, and increased censorship in the country.

More recently, Indian anime fans have found another option: Crunchyroll, the world’s largest anime-streaming platform, has made a big push in the Indian market over the past two years.

In October 2022, Crunchyroll opened an office in Mumbai and hired a team to focus on building an anime community in the country. To increase brand awareness, Crunchyroll co-sponsors all five Comic Cons held in India; last July, it hired Bollywood...

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