Mythik raises $5M to build a "Disney from the East" around mythology
What's the deal? MythikDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, an Indian media-tech startup creating an entertainment universe around Eastern mythology and folklore, has closed a $5 million funding round at a valuation above $50 million. The raise drew heavyweight backers including Dream11 co-founder Harsh Jain, former McKinsey global managing director Rajat Gupta, and Zubin Bharti Mittal of the Bharti Mittal Family Office.
Ishan Sinha, who leads private investing at Point72 — a US-based firm managing over $50 billion in assets — also participated, alongside Blume Founder's Fund and Rooshabh Shah of SVAR Projects.
Several investors from Mythik's earlier seed round returned, including Sakal Media Group, the Patni Family Office, the Parekh Family Office, and Samir Vora, formerly group chief executive officer of Enam Asset Management. Founder and chief executive officer Jason Kothari also put in capital.
Why now? The round comes roughly a year after Mythik closed a $15 million seed round — the largest in India's media-tech sector at the time. The fresh capital signals continued momentum and growing investor appetite for IP-driven entertainment rooted in non-Western storytelling traditions.
Mythik says it targets a built-in global audience of 3.5 billion people drawn to Indian and Eastern mythology, history, and folklore. It has assembled a 200-person team with alumni from Disney, Amazon Studios, UTV, Jio, Tencent, MX Player, Amar Chitra Katha, and Walmart.
What could go wrong? Building a global entertainment brand is capital-intensive and brutally competitive. Mythik's ambition — Kothari has described it as creating a "Disney from the East" — puts it in a category where execution risk is high and timelines are long. The company will likely need significantly more funding before its content reaches scale.
The signal: Mythik's "breakout" stage designation on Dealroom, despite being barely a year past its seed round, underscores how quickly investor conviction is building around IP-driven media ventures outside the Western studio system. The participation of Harsh Jain — whose Dream11 is itself a late-growth platform that turned a massive Indian audience into a global business — suggests backers see a similar playbook: leverage a culturally specific starting point to capture an audience far larger than any single market.
Read more: outlookbusiness.com
