After raising funds, Kuaikan Comics has stepped up its support for comic series and encouraged domestic original comics

Do you remember Kuaikan Comics, the leading media in the domestic comics industry? According to media reports, Kuaikan Comics held a product upgrade conference in Beijing. Kuaikan Comics announced that it would upgrade its brand to Kuaikan and launch a new product, "Comic Drama". In addition, Kuaikan founder Chen Anni also announced that she would invest 1 billion yuan in supporting original comics and 1 billion yuan in comic drama production in the next three years.

Kuaikan Comics is an online comics app founded by Annie Chen in 2014. Its MAU reached 40 million at its peak. In 2019, Kuaikan Comics received financing from Tencent. It is worth mentioning that Kuaikan Comics received investment from ByteDance in the C round, but after Tencent entered, ByteDance has cleared all its shares and exited.

When Kuaikan Comics was founded, Chinese comics were booming. Comics suitable for vertical screen transmission quickly became popular on social platforms such as Weibo. Chen Anni was also a popular comic strip author on Weibo. By discovering and incubating authors at an early stage, Kuaikan Comics successfully made its first pot of gold. In addition, according to Analysys data, Kuaikan Comics had already ranked first in the industry in 2017, ahead of the second-place Tencent Comics.

However, as old rivals such as Manman Comics and NetEase Comics were either acquired or removed from the market, Kuaikan's "first place" has become somewhat embarrassing. On the one hand, the collective decline of the domestic comics craze after the decline of the entertainment industry; on the other hand, the talent training problem that the industry has always faced. At the press conference, Chen Anni mentioned a set of data. In 2014, the total population of Japan was 120 million, and the number of professional cartoonists was about 7,000. In China at the same time, the number of professional cartoonists was only more than 600.

For Chen Anni, comic series are a more effective means of attracting traffic. She believes that readers have now passed the novelty period of comic strips and need innovation. "A format of 3 minutes per episode will make users feel more like watching a short video." She also mentioned a set of data. Since the comic series went online, combined with the submissions on short video platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin, the number of views of Kuaishou's comic series has reached 1.5 billion.

At present, comics and dramas have undoubtedly become the next growth point for Kuaikan. In an interview, Chen Anni revealed to AI Finance and other media that they have reached copyright cooperation with platforms such as Yuewen and Jinjiang, and will give priority to adapting popular works. In addition, Kuaikan is also developing a comics and drama editor open to ordinary users to build a UGC ecosystem.

Kuaikan is still in the race surrounded by Bilibili and Tencent Comics. According to Jiguang data, in June this year, Kuaikan Comics had 15.111 million monthly active users, and Bilibili Comics had 8.285 million monthly active users. Although the current data still has an advantage, with the further reduction of players in the race and the shrinking production capacity of comics in recent years, stock competition is inevitable. In particular, in horizontal comparison, Kuaikan's monthly active users have declined year-on-year, while Bilibili Comics has increased by 73% year-on-year.

In addition, Kuaikan also plans to invest in comics-related derivative projects such as film, television, and games, and "is currently in the process of experimenting."

Compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, which have channel advantages, Kuaikan still faces the problem of whether comics and dramas will become a complete content supplier for others. At the same time, comics and dramas have not yet found a good commercial incision.

Chen Anni said that these problems will be solved in the future by building and improving the creative mechanism. "Even if we cooperate with other major platforms, it is still in the hands of Kuaikan to enable the creators of comics to obtain more commercial income."