Dadi Maa ki Kahaniyan – A tribute to every grandmother

Story telling is an art, a medium of information which has been in existence since the
early days of mankind. Every person has fond memories of childhood spent listening to
fascinating stories woven by parents or grandparents. But a grandmother pampers a kid like
no one else and everyone can relate to the fact that children seek the same stories again
and again from their grandmother. Even if they knew how the story unfolded, kids often ask
for a particular story because it wasn’t the story alone which kept them engaged; it was the
way of story-telling, the small variations in the story line, the gestures or the quirks added
by their grandmother which makes it an experience worth savouring

In this era of increasingly nuclear families with busy working parents, the kids these days
are missing out on this wonderful experience which stokes the creativity and imagination of
children like no other. We want to bridge this gap by collecting stories from grandmothers
across the country and making them available to people who want to tell stories to their
kids that had engrossed their generation when they were kids. We believe stories to kids
have been limited to story books or cartoons these days and parents are more than happy
to purchase them for the entertainment of their child. But this has kept out the humane
aspect out of the equation and we intend to bring the personal touch back to storytelling.

Project plan

1. A questionnaire to collect from people various ideas which can be helpful in
designing the website. We can gain insights on what people can expect from such
a website and how we can provide incentives for people to contribute with their
grandmother stories.

2. Collecting a preliminary database of stories in the form of videos, text or audio files
in different languages would require the help of students in the campus and can
form a rich initial seed of stories.

3. The actual design of the website can be finalized after iterations and testing it for
optimal user experience. The technology choice and the hosting of website would
also need considerable effort and some investment.

4. Once the website is hosted, there can be a web marketing program to generate
awareness for the website in order to get more contributions from users

Our vision is that this website should be able to sustain itself in the form of user
contributions just like Wikipedia.

Some interesting feedback we received in the class was that:

1. This website can even contain content which children would post for fun and this can be shared
2. Approaching school children and getting their grandmother stories is the best way
3. Revenue can be generated through advertisements and subscription fee from parents

We would incorporate this feedback in our business model and we have started our web design process. We would like to welcome any new ideas/comments and any grandmother audio or video recordings at p11nayanabhiramd@iimahd.ernet.in.

By Srinivas Jandhyala, Amruth Konda and Nayanabhiram