Ramen TV · Seed Round 2026
Anime.Served.Hot.
The AI-native anime studio for vertical drama.
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02The Shift
Attention moved to the vertical screen. Nobody owns its stories yet.
Short-drama downloads doubled in 2025. Traditional streaming shrank.
2.3B
Short-drama app downloads in 2025, up over 100% YoY
25 min
Average daily time in short-drama apps by Apr 2026, up 85%
−4%
Traditional streaming app downloads, 2025
Sources: Sensor Tower, State of Short Drama Apps 2025 & 2026; Hollywood Reporter.
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03Market
A multi-billion category, growing 115% a year.
China hit $9.4B in 2025, passing its theatrical box office. The rest of the world is on the same curve, 2 to 3 years behind.
$1.4B
2024
$2.98B
2025 · +115%
$7.8B
2026F
$16.2B
China market by 2030 (MPA)
$9.5B
Ex-China market by 2030, 28.4% CAGR (MPA)
830M
Viewers in China; 60% pay (MPA)
Sources: Sensor Tower; Deloitte TMT Predictions 2026; Media Partners Asia, 2025.
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04The Opening
Incumbents rent their audience: ~90% of revenue burns on ads.
Human production sets their cost floor. The ad auction takes the rest.
Where an incumbent's revenue dollar goes
ReelShort reportedly spent ~$27M of $30M in monthly revenue on user acquisition (2024 industry reports).
~$300K
Avg production cost, 60-90 episode US series (TIME)
5-9×
UA spend vs production budget per series
$15+
Cost per paying-user install on Meta, US
Sources: TIME via adjoe; Streaming Lens production-cost survey 2026; industry reports 2024.
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05Ramen TV
An AI-native anime studio: own the IP, produce at near-zero cost.
Anime is a $31.9B market headed to $64.4B by 2032. Every major vertical-drama incumbent is live-action. Nobody owns vertical anime.
Anime-native pipeline
Script, voice, and animation run as one agentic pipeline. AI video is strongest at stylized content: consistent characters, no uncanny valley. A series ships in days, in any language.
Owned universes
Original anime IP, starting with the TRENCHES saga plus a revenge, romance, and fantasy slate. No licensing. Every spin-off compounds our catalog.
Binge economics
First episodes free. Coins unlock the cliffhanger. The model that built a $3B category, minus the cost base.
Source: SNS Insider, Anime Market Report 2025 (2024 baseline $31.9B, 9.18% CAGR to 2032).
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06Product · Built
The platform is built: it turns cliffhangers into coins.
Live on web: signed playback tokens, server-side entitlements, append-only coin ledger. iOS and Android next.
Binge player
Coin paywall
Series drawer
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07Business Model
The incumbents' engine, minus their cost base.
Free episodes, then coins at the cliffhanger. Proven at billions in scale. We differ on the lines that decide margin:
| ReelShort / DramaBox | Ramen TV | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Live-action | Anime-native, built for a Gen Z-led $31.9B fandom |
| Content cost / series | ~$300K avg (US) | <$5K target (AI pipeline)* |
| IP ownership | Licensed & work-for-hire mix | 100% owned |
| Time to new series | Months | Days, tuned on live retention data |
| Localization | Dub / subtitle after the fact | Native-generated per language |
| Monetization | Coins + ads + subscription | Same playbook: coins first |
*Target at pipeline maturity. Internal assumption, not an achieved figure.
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08Why Now
Three curves crossed. This window is open once.
01
Demand proven
$2.98B in-app spend in 2025. 13 short-drama apps in Google Play's top 50 grossing. Nobody needs convincing that people pay for vertical stories.
02
Costs trapped
US production runs ~$300K a series and UA is an arms race incumbents bid against each other. They can't reach our cost floor without abandoning human production.
03
AI crossed the line
Frontier models hold character and style best in stylized, anime-adjacent formats. Photoreal formats still fight the uncanny valley; anime doesn't. First pipeline + distribution wins.
Sources: Sensor Tower; ASO World Google Play grossing analysis, 2026.
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09Moat
Every view trains the writers' room.
04 to 01: the loop closes. Incumbents iterate in months. We iterate in days and keep every asset.
01
Audience watches
Second-by-second retention, swipe-aways, unlock decisions.
02
Signals extracted
Which hooks and cliffhangers convert, per genre and market.
03
AI room responds
New episodes generated against live data, in days.
04
Catalog compounds
More owned IP, more discovery clips, more viewers in the loop.
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10Go-To-Market
Every episode is its own ad.
Incumbents pay $15+ per paying install and still profit. With content near free, the same auctions clear far higher margin for us.
Now · Web
Site and waitlist live, web app playable. No app-store tax while we tune conversion.
01 · App stores
iOS + Android with 3 flagship series. Cliffhanger clips seeded to TikTok, Reels, Shorts.
02 · Paid scale
Paid UA only after organic cohorts show payback. Creator clip program turns fans into the ad network.
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11Competition
Everyone else picks: own stories, or afford them.
Owns its IP · high content cost
Netflix
owned, $100M+ budgets, wrong screen
Rents stories · high content cost
ReelShort · DramaBox
live-action, ~$300K/series, mixed rights
No owned fiction · near-zero cost
TikTok / UGC
free content, no owned fiction
Rented stories · premium cost
Quibi †
premium cost, horizontal, no model
Owns its IP · near-zero cost
Ramen TV
owned anime IP · AI-native cost floor
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12Traction
Shipped by two founders. The ops model is the proof.
Jul 2026
Full platform live on web: binge player, coin ledger, server-side paywall, admin CMS, payments. 147 automated tests passing.
Jul 2026
Marketing site + waitlist live. Design system locked.
Jul 2026
Content engine in build: TRENCHES anime universe bible and first-slate outlines.
Next 90 days
First AI-produced series in the player · iOS beta · waitlist cohort data.
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13Team
Built for the era where two people run a studio.
Suneeth · Co-founder
A decade producing films in the South Indian market, from production through theatrical release. Owns the slate, story quality, and the release playbook.
Rohan · Co-founder
Designed and shipped the full multi-platform streaming stack: player, payments, paywall infrastructure, design system. The same agentic pipeline will produce the content.
First hires
Animation lead: visual quality of the pipeline. Growth lead: the clip-to-install loop. Everything else stays agentic until data says otherwise.
A producer who has shipped to real audiences for ten years, and a builder who ships studio infrastructure in weeks. The full studio stack, in two people.
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14Model · Illustrative
At incumbent conversion, the cost base does the rest.
Scenario, not a forecast. Every input is an assumption to be replaced by cohort data:
| Installs, month 18 | 1.0M cumulative | Fraction of incumbent quarterly volume |
| Payer conversion | 5% | Conservative vs China's 60% pay rate (MPA) |
| ARPPU / month | $12 | Below incumbent coin-pack norms |
| Content cost / month | <$25K | AI pipeline at slate scale |
~$7.2M
Implied annual revenue run-rate at month 18
>80%
Implied contribution margin before UA, vs ~10% incumbent margin after UA
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15The Ask
$1.5M seed: 3 series, 1M installs, payback proven.
Content engine & slate
40%
Growth & distribution
30%
Product (iOS / Android)
20%
Ops, legal, reserve
10%
18 months of runway. Milestones: first AI series live Q4 '26 · iOS + Android Q1 '27 · paid UA with proven payback Q2 '27 · Series A metrics Q4 '27.
Draft figures. Round size, milestones, and dates to be confirmed by founders before sending.
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16The Bet
Netflix owned the television. The phone is up for grabs.
The next great anime studio won't license its stories or shoot anything. It will grow them, episode by episode. We're building it.
invest@ramentv.aiRamen TV · NTS · Suneeth & Rohan
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