Our Story

Comicola

The story begins 10 years ago, when Mr. Nguyen Khanh Duong, then an independent comic book author and IT engineer, faced difficulties in publishing his first comic. To solve this problem, he established Comicola Joint Stock Company and developed its own crowdfunding platform.

In just two years thereafter, Comicola unexpectedly flourished, successfully publishing 80% of works in the Vietnamese comic market, while Mr. Nguyen Khanh Duong's crowdfunding platform became the largest in this market. At the same time, Comicola is also the only company in the world to receive four International Manga Awards from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

However, as the comic market gradually transitions to digital platforms as an inevitable development, the strong growth of webtoons has posed a risk of decline for traditional comics in many countries around the world.

Therefore, Comicola begins to find ways to help independent comic authors continue to pursue their dream in the digital age without relying solely on revenue from traditional publishing.

MangaBooth

At the end of 2020, Mr. Nguyen Khanh Duong and his friend Henry Doan established a technology startup company with the aim of developing web3 products for EVM-compatible chains.

Many years ago, Henry Doan created Mangabooth, the world's most famous WordPress theme, with 25,000 users and 1 billion views each month.

With years of experience in producing comics on the international scale, Duong and Henry both see the potential of Web3 technology in exploring the online comics field. Consequently, they set a goal to build a platform to help independent comic authors generate revenue.

In June 2023, they started developing the comi.io project with the aim of creating more opportunities for comic artists to earn income.

Comi

During the initial research and development stages, the team worked together to assign specific tasks.

Nguyen Khanh Duong's Comicola team contacted hundreds of independent comic artists in Vietnam and around the world with the aim of understanding their desires and the issues they face when creating comics on online platforms and sustaining their personal needs through their creative work.

Meanwhile, Henry Doan's Mangabooth team reached out to thousands of Mangabooth customers - website owners who distribute comics - to gather insights into the current readers' demands worldwide.

After months of research, the collected data has been aggregated, analyzed, and deeply researched in meetings to derive the most optimal monetization model for comic creators.