Otter Media, the joint investment venture between digital media company Chernin Group and telecommunications firm AT&T, has invested $22m in Ellation, the US-based operator of video streaming service Crunchyroll, TechCrunch reported on Friday.
Crunchyroll is an online streaming service focused on Japanese anime content. The platform has racked up 20 million registered users and is set to achieve 750,000 paying subscribers by the end of 2015.
Chernin Group paid an undisclosed sum for a majority stake in Crunchyroll in 2013, after Japan-based broadcaster TV Tokyo invested $750,000 in the company in 2010.
The latest funding will be used to strengthen Crunchyroll’s product and engineering, and to launch original content initiatives, possibly in partnership with corporates.
Ellation general manager Kun Gao told TechCrunch: “We are trying to build video and product that super-serve a certain set of the audience.
“That is fundamentally different from Hulu and Netflix, which are trying to go very broad with a thin layer of content.”