When Vickram Agarwal found out that he was going to be a father he tried to do all the research possible before he and his wife had their baby. But he didn't find much to read up online - no advice about what to do before or after you have a child. At least, not for a father. Vickram found this strange and decided he wanted to be able to create a forum to help out new fathers like him. He then reached out to his school friend, Meshach Thomas and together they created 'Daddy's Digest'.
Daddy's Digest is a platform that provides new fathers with expert advice, articles and personal accounts and even comics about fatherhood. But unlike what the name suggests, it's not a site that just talks about fatherhood, Daddy Digest is a space for all men to seek comfort in reading or writing about the struggles that they face in their day to day lives, sometimes even about things like why they don't want to be fathers. "Most of the material online is mother-centric, there is barely anything on fatherhood and the challenges that come with it - from putting the child to sleep to feeding it or the stress that comes with it. That's when I felt like I could do something about this and the fact that I'm already into digital marketing helped the cause," Vickram said.
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Vickram then reached out to Meshach, who was also into digital marketing. Funnily enough, the two were speaking for the first time in 14 years, "We had a lot to catch up on and ended up talking about our lives. It was so great to have someone to talk to about all the things that we had been through, that's when we realised that this platform should cater to all men and encourage them to speak out about what they were going through." Vickram said. But this is not a space to just rant about your problems, the duo says, "We want people to find solutions, not just have a conversation explaining their problems. We don't want to be an agony aunt type of forum."
The duo said that platforms similar to theirs did exist in Western countries but there was almost close to nothing in Asia. "We were particular that we would generate expert content on the site, experts who can offer advice. Not just Indian, but we are also collaborating with experts and educational foundations based internationally. We also wanted to ensure we have balanced articles and the topics are on a wide range of topics. Men have always suffered from the stigma of expressing their feelings and asking for help, so we have also focused on the aspect of mental health," said Meshach.
But when the founders clarify that the even though the site is discussing men's issues that doesn't mean it is not open to women, "It is for everyone and we have both men and women writing for us," he explained. Since September of last year, the duo have been working hard together and despite Vickram being based in Dubai and Meshach working from Chennai, they managed to get the project running in April. They only ended up meeting the day before the launch of platform!
Daddy's Digest has only been online for a little over a month but they already have over one lakh followers on Facebook and have a lot of people writing to them, thanking them for creating the platform and also wanting to contribute to the same. "People want to be a part of the Digest, the response has been uniform, which is this is most exciting. Anyone that we collaborate with is thrilled to work with us, they want to open up about their personal stories too. We're trying to put together stories from men that would otherwise not get told," the duo said.
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