StoReel accelerates layout in the North American short drama market
EqualOcean has learned that StoReel, an overseas short drama platform under Beijing Shidorean Technology Co., Ltd. headquartered in Beijing, recently completed multi-million dollar strategic financing. The investor is a well-known overseas game company. The funds from this round of financing will mainly be used for platform content development, and the investor will provide continuous strategic support and inject more capital in the future.
StoReel is an overseas short drama platform company mainly targeting overseas markets such as North America. Its founding team comes from prestigious institutions like Peking University and Columbia University. CEO Eric once led the construction of the short drama business at Linmon Pictures. He was responsible for the domestic short drama structures and the establishment of the overseas short drama content system, and successfully promoted Linmon Pictures's listing. The COO & CFO has extensive experience in Internet operations and strategy, as well as profound capabilities in investment, financing, and capital operation. The CCO, a Chinese American, is in charge of the localization and cross-cultural adaptation of StoReel's content. The CTO is a former technical director of an AI company, with a solid technical background at ByteDance and Hello Group. The person in charge of placement once led short drama products to rank among the top 20 globally in terms of revenue.
StoReel began to layout in the short drama track at the beginning of 2024 and launched in overseas markets in the second half of 2024. Currently, it has two overseas short drama production studios, and the third one is under preparation. At present, it can ensure the production capacity of 3-5 dramas per month. In addition, considering the current gap in short drama production capacity between China and foreign countries, 70-80% of the short drama copyrights on the StoReel platform currently come from purchases.
Public data shows that in 2023, the short drama market scale was close to that of the movie market. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, more than 40 Chinese micro short drama apps "went overseas", generating nearly 55 million downloads and USD 170 million (CNY 1238 million) in purchase revenue. During the same period, the total downloads of popular overseas short drama apps exceeded 37.66 million, a month-on-month increase of over 92.3% compared with the fourth quarter of last year.
StoReel has applied AI capabilities to short drama content creation and will continue to explore and implement initiatives in the direction of AI + short dramas in the future.