A group of home-bound mothers create news app for kids
Kids are utterly curious, and rightly so. Their endless queries are usually pleasing. But what if you're too occupied to address their questions, or just need a little break? Well, here's a solution. Ritika Kumar, a mother and entrepreneur, with support from other homemakers, has created a kids-exclusive newspaper and app - The Young Chronicle. The aim is to provide meaningful content to kids.
Early steps
Ritika had always been driven to bring about a change in education for children. In 2009, while pursuing her MBA from the Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA), Ahmedabad, she started a social networking portal called AchaBacha.co.in. The website was a one-stop solution to address parenting problems. And, now this novel news portal is a part of this initiative.
Ritika channelized her experience, passion to build 'The Young Chronicle'
Ritika channelized her experience and passion to build The Young Chronicle. "I had a fair amount of experience in E-learning and had created close to 300 education-based scripts. I also had many colleagues who were grappling with parenting issues. They were all first-generation parents stepping out to work, leaving behind their children at day-cares or home," Ritika told The Better India.
The coming of The Young Chronicle
In early 2016, Ritika reached out to many homemaker mommies, using various online portals, in order to hire them to work for The Young Chronicle. "My focus was solely on making important content easy and fun for children to understand. I wanted children to have all their questions answered without having to wait till they grew older," said Ritika.
The response
"Many people from well-known organizations applied. Some of them were on a sabbatical, others had chosen to stay at home with their children, and some had to quit owing to the transferable jobs of their husbands," Ritika quipped.
The platform is available at different reading levels
The Young Chronicle helps children learn at different reading levels. "A question asked by a six-year-old and 10-year-old might be similar but how we answer it needs to cater to their levels of understanding. The Young Chronicle addresses this issue," explained Ritika. The papers are put together at four levels, one each for classes 1, 2, 3, and another for classes 4-7.
'The Young Chronicle' is available in two formats
The service is available in two different formats- a physical copy, mailed every fortnight, and an e-version, e-mailed each week. A quarterly subscription to the printed version costs Rs. 600, while the e-version can be bought quarterly at Rs. 360. With more than 500 subscribers already, the team is constantly working to reach more and more homes.
"My breakthrough came when I started hiring mothers"
"My breakthrough came when I started hiring mothers. To have people in your team aligned in the same way makes a world of difference," concludes Ritika.
