The Media & Entertainment Association of India (MEAI) proudly announces that Crunchyroll, the global anime brand fueling fans’ passion and love of anime, has joined WAM! (WAVES Anime & Manga Contest) 2025 as the Title Sponsor.
In a significant boost to India’s budding creators, Crunchyroll has introduced a Creator Development Grant to nurture and empower the winners of WAM! 2025. This grant aims to support emerging artists and storytellers in the anime, manga, and webtoon fields as they develop original intellectual properties (IPs) for global audiences.
Creator Development Grant Details:
- Manga (Student Category) — INR 25,000
- Manga (Professional Category) — INR 25,000
- Webtoon (Student Category) — INR 25,000
- Webtoon (Professional Category) — INR 25,000
- Anime (Student Category) — INR 50,000
- Anime (Professional Category) — INR 50,000
In addition, Crunchyroll will extend its support to Team India, the winners of the WAM! 2025 Finale, as they represent the country at Anime Japan 2026, the world’s premier anime exhibition in Tokyo. This backing will help showcase India’s original creative talents on the global stage.
About WAM! and WAVES:
WAM! (WAVES Anime & Manga Contest) is India’s first national initiative dedicated to discovering, nurturing, and promoting original Indian IPs in anime, manga, webtoons, and cosplay.
WAM! is an integral part of WAVES (World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit) — India’s largest AVGC-XR (Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics, and Extended Reality) and media industry platform. Organized by MEAI and supported by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, WAVES brings together global leaders, innovators, studios, and creators to foster India’s creative economy.
WAVES 2025 will be held from 1st to 4th May 2025 at Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai, and will be inaugurated by Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji.
Through WAM! and WAVES, MEAI is championing the “Create in India, Create for the World” vision — empowering Indian creators to dream bigger and reach global audiences.
A Major Milestone for India’s Creator Economy:
“This partnership with Crunchyroll marks a pivotal moment for India’s creator community,” said Ankur Bhasin, Secretary of MEAI. “By investing directly in emerging artists, Crunchyroll is helping turn dreams into reality and giving a powerful global platform to Indian voices in anime, manga, and webtoons.”
About Crunchyroll
Crunchyroll is the global anime brand that fuels fans’ love of anime. With the ambition to make anime an even bigger part of pop culture, Crunchyroll offers fans the ultimate anime experience and destination centered around a premium streaming service. Crunchyroll has the largest dedicated anime library, an immersive world of events, exciting theatrical releases, unique games, must-have merchandise, timely news, and more. Anime is for everyone and is accessible to stream across territories through Crunchyroll—whether on the go on mobile, through gaming consoles and big-screen devices at home, or on desktops anywhere.
Crunchyroll, LLC is an independently operated joint venture between U.S.-based Sony Pictures Entertainment and Japan’s Aniplex, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., both subsidiaries of Tokyo-based Sony Group.
Bookmark our Website to stay tuned for more updates as WAM! continues its journey, uniting and inspiring India’s next generation of manga, anime, and webtoon creators!
Sourcec: Press Release
