Tencent invested in the animation track three times in three months.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Financial Graffiti” (ID: caijingtuya ), the author Jin Lei,edit tuya.
According to the company’s intelligence expert “Financial Graffiti” news, the comic content operator “burning culture” has recently received a new round of financing from Tencent. A person close to the transaction revealed that this round of A-round financing for the burning culture, the transaction amount is 10 million yuan.
Before this, Burning Culture also received angel round financing from Jingwei China and Pre-A round financing from New World Group in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
It is worth noting that this is Tencent’s third consecutive time in the animation track in just three months.
On August 27 this year, the comic reading community “Looking at Comics” announced that it has received a new round of investment of $125 million from Tencent. Tencent said that this investment is based on the optimistic and strategic layout of the animation secondary industry. On September 17, Tencent joined hands with the fast-handler to complete the tens of millions of A+ round investment in the comic production company Cross Star.
Public information shows that Burning Culture was established in April 2015. Its main business is the production, promotion, data analysis and commercial operation of comics, dynamic comics, animation and related content. Including “The First World”, “Zen Girl”, “Blood Blood” and so on.
In addition, Burning Culture also launched the first animation AR content platform in China, Fuel App, which provides AR content service and technology platform support for comic publications and ACG related offline activities.
The burning culture is in BP (business plan)It is to interpret one’s own competitive advantage “quickly verify the market; enter the realizing link in the first time; accumulate word of mouth and influence in multiple dimensions; stand out from the works.” In contrast, it believes that the pain of traditional comic CP company is that “copyright is handed over to the platform; the cost is high and the battle line is long; except for the giant company, few companies have sufficient funds and strength to develop.”
It is worth mentioning that Tencent has invested in nearly 20 animated cartoon companies in the two years from 2017 to 2019, of which more than 6 have become comic CP companies, including anime hall, fox culture, sugar people. Anime, etc.
In 2017, the general manager of Tencent PCG Animation Business Department (who called the general manager of Tencent’s mutual entertainment animation business department) Zou Zhengyu publicly proposed that Tencent’s investment demand for Tencent Animation is mainly four points. High-quality creative ability and team talents; 2. Unique achievements in the field of featured subjects; 3. Thinking about long-term business management; 4. Maintaining long-term good cooperative relations with Tencent Animation.
In 2018, the frequency of Tencent’s anime shots was significantly less. In this regard, Zou Zhengyu explained that “after two or three years of development, whether the team has sufficient capacity has begun to appear. For this part of the team that demonstrates its capabilities, Tencent Animation will continue to have a large investment and deepening cooperation.”
The undeniable point is that after the content water source is becoming “depleted” and almost all the giants have divided up, the animation industry is already one of the few incremental markets. Tencent also chose to complete it in a very short time. The upper reaches of the industry – the PGC comic studio at the creative level and the comic platform at the operational level.