Positive News to build a Better India -Dhimant Parekh at IIS
Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of The Better India news portal, Dhimant Parekh talks about the importance of positive news in our everyday life.
A lot of hands go up among the audience of India Inclusion Summit when Dhimant asks them, ‘How many of you read newspaper first thing in the morning?’. His follow up question, ‘How many of you are happy after reading the newspaper?’ only confirms everyone’s suspicion of the negative biased newspapers we have today. Neither did these news stories help one be happy nor did it solve the problems they had. In Dhimant and his wife’s (Anuradha Parekh) mind, this couldn’t be the case that India had only negative news to show for, every single day. That set this husband-wife duo on a quest to sing the stories of the unsung and bring to fore grass root innovations that got lost in the labyrinth of not-built-here products that filled our daily lives. Thus started The Better India news site to bring positive news about everyday heroes and their herculean efforts to defy every odd.
Then a mail arrived. It was from a young girl who wrote, ‘You have given me a new direction in life’. And the inspiration to her had come from a story about a photography club for visually impaired. This girl who was also visually challenged had quite an interest in photography and Better India’s coverage of ‘Blind with camera’ gave her an avenue to pursue her passion. This was TBI teams defining moment and Anuradha plunged into it full time. What started as a side hobby for the Husband-Wife duo soon spurred the imagination of the readers and writers alike and today The Better India has 500 writers and is read by 2 million readers from across the globe every single month. Not to mention the innumerable inspirational moments it has had on its audience through its positive news.
Watch the full talk here.
About Dhimant Parekh:
Dhimant is a computer science engineer at heart. He loves to build useful stuff from scratch. Be it the earlier version of India’s mobile payment app ngpay or hoopos the e-commerce store for children, Dhimant has helped build great products. No wonder is one of India’s top Product Mentors. His latest venture is TheBetterIndia.com — an award-winning positive news site that brings the stories of unsung heroes and grassroots innovation to the fore.
Follow Dhimant on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dhimantparekh
Follow Dhimant on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhimant
Personal Blog: http://www.thebetterindia.com/author/dhimantparekh/
Organization Website: http://www.thebetterindia.com/
