Toonsutra Bets on AI to Turn Comics Into Cinema With Its Cinematic Mode

For most of their history, comics have asked readers to do the work: to imagine motion between panels, to hear voices in speech bubbles and to supply the soundtrack themselves. Toonsutra, the Indian webtoon platform, is betting that a new generation of readers wants some of that work done for them.

What Cinematic Mode does

The company's Cinematic Mode, launched in beta, converts webcomics into short multimedia stories. Its core features are:

• Animated panels, which bring still artwork into motion

• Character voices, including dialogue in Indian languages

• Adaptive background music that follows the beats of the story

• Auto-scroll, which moves the reader through panels in a "lean-back" format that needs no swiping

The company describes it as a comic that, in effect, narrates itself.

The technology underneath

Toonsutra says its framework reads panels and characters to decide what to animate, how characters should sound and what the music should do. It credits three Google models:

• Veo 3 for turning static panels into animation

• Gemini 2.5 Pro for character speech

• Lyria 2 for background music

Importantly, the company says Cinematic Mode was built with approved publishing partners, a point that matters in a creative industry deeply wary of AI being applied to work without consent.

The people and the numbers

Co-Founder and CEO Vishal Anand has described the launch as "the birth of Comics 2.0". Co-founder and Executive Chairman Sharad Devarajan, a long-time figure in Indian comics, has framed the ambition as shaping how India's vast youth audience experiences short-form, audio-visual storytelling.

According to the company, Toonsutra has:

• More than one million monthly active users

• Over 3,300 titles and 500,000 episodes

It also points to India's 700 million-plus mobile youth market and projections that the global webtoon market could reach $60 billion by 2030. These are company figures, but the direction of travel is clear.

The larger question

Cinematic Mode sits at an interesting intersection. It borrows from animation, audio drama and short video, three formats competing for the same young audience. Its real test is not technical but artistic: whether readers feel they are getting more of a story, or less of the comic.

There is also an economic logic. A comic that plays like a short video can compete for attention in the same scroll as Reels and Shorts, a shift we examined in our piece on why YouTube is the new TV in India. If Toonsutra can keep artists and publishers on side while making comics feel native to that scroll, it may have found a meaningful way to grow a medium that India has long loved but rarely monetised well.

Frequently asked questions

What is Toonsutra's Cinematic Mode?

A reading mode that turns webcomics into self-playing stories with AI-generated animation, character voices and background music, using auto-scroll.

Which AI tools does Toonsutra use?

The company says it uses Google's Veo 3 for panel animation, Gemini 2.5 Pro for character speech and Lyria 2 for music.

Who founded Toonsutra?

Toonsutra's co-founders include CEO Vishal Anand and Executive Chairman Sharad Devarajan.

How many users does Toonsutra have?

The company says it has over one million monthly active users and more than 3,300 titles.