If you want your poems to be heard or just want to tell a story, then this Jamia Milia Islamia alumnus' digital platform is your place to be. YourVoice has been organising poetry and storytelling events in multiple cities of India and different colleges, providing opportunities to aspiring poets and storytellers with 50% slots reserved for women performers in every event. Currently, they have a channel on YouTube that has already garnered over 102,000 likes within just a year of its inception.
YourVoice, a platform for poets and storytellers is also supported by the NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore, under its programme that specifically caters to entrepreneurs with profit ventures and social ventures, including student and women entrepreneurs. It also offers its support to various players of the start-up ecosystem.
YourVoice was founded on June 1, 2018 and is the brainchild of social entrepreneur Khalid, who is an engineering graduate from Jamia Millia Islamia. Prior to this he had also founded his first digital media startup 'Aapka Times' in December 2013 when he was a student at the varsity. He is also a Mentor of Change for the Government of India’s flagship programme of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs), established by the Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog.
YourVoice founder Md Khalid Hasan explains to us why they set up such a platform when there are a thousand of YouTube channels of the same genre. "We have launched YourVoice in Hindi, Urdu, English and Bhojpuri. Soon we will be launching it in Bangla, Maithili and other regional languages to reach the masses of the country by producing vernacular content as it has been seen that rural India has a lot of talented artists but they do not get any platform to showcase their talent," says Khalid, adding, "Our grandparents used to tell us stories when we were kids, read from books, but now with the boost in digital content they are losing their charm. So we want to digitalise these stories and poems. Like these stories always had a moral at the end, most of our content is based on social issues and specifically on women-related issues."
In addition to explaining why they are keen on getting into the vernacular space, Khalid added that internet users of Indian languages are expected to reach 536 million, while English is expected to reach 199 million by 2021. However, in 2016, number of internet users of Indian languages were 234 Million and English internet users were 175 million. Nine out of 10 new internet users between 2016 and 2021 will use local languages according to a report by KPMG and Google. And so it is important to tap the local language market, opines Khalid.
Khalid and his team consisting of a number of his juniors from Jamia Milia Islamia, are planning to launch the YourVoice website by the end of this year.
