Jeffrey Katzenberg‘s WndrCo is among investors backing Latin American microdrama platform Idilio.
WndrCo joined a16z Speedrun, Goodwater Capital, Precursor Ventures and Latin American fintech leader David Vélez in a $5.5M seed funding round.
Idilio is being positioned as at the intersection of popular Latin American telenovelas and the vertical video world, with an AI-powered engine producing short-form drama series up “40 times cheaper and 30 times faster than traditional competitors.”
For WndrCo, this is a latest investment in an emerging content business. Last year, we were first with the news AI animation company Cartwheel had attracted Katzenberg to a $10M funding round. In 2022, it invested in financial services startup Wrapbook.
Tafur, the Latin American media personality and journalist who has fronted numerous TV shows and entertainment projects, co-founded Idilio with Esteban Ramírez. They claim that prior to Idilio’s creation there was no place in the global microdrama boom for Spanish and Portuguese speakers, with China and the U.S. broadly considered to have led the charge.
Since launching five months ago, Idilio claims to have been downloaded 1.5 million times across 93 countries, with little marketing spend. The co-founder say 40 million episodes have been streamed in-app, with users consuming 50 minutes of content daily on average – twice the amount they say Netflix gets.
“We built Idilio because we knew this audience deserved something built for them, not translated for them. Latam has been a hub for production and talent, said Tafur, CEO of Idilio. “It was about time someone also built the tech for it. This raise is proof that the world agrees.”
At the same time as the raise, Idilio is launching Idilio Creators, a program that allows any microdrama makers to monetize their content on the platform. It will pass on 100% of the profits to the creators, and appears to be aimed at empowering Latin American content creators to enter the medium.
Idilio’s existing investors include Jonathan Carson, Blitzscaling Ventures, Honeystone Ventures, Accelerator Ventures, Raw Ventures, Numundo Ventures, Alex Mashrabov, Graham Weaver, Brian Jacobs, Endurance VC, FoundersX, TenSquared Capital, Cooley, Matt Widowes, GSB ’25 Fund and MBA Ventures.
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