KnowYourStar.com Journey: Sharath P R
Inception
A trek to Machu Picchu in Peru, a visit to Petra in Jordon, start an eatery joint, learn at least one European language. Wondering what are these? These are few of the items in the bucket list of things to do before I die. When I was preparing this list, I started to realize that beneficiary of this list is going to be only me or it would bring happiness/satisfaction only to me. It was then the idea of extending the list of beneficiary to my people, my society, my country took shape. This prompted me to add few more but significant entries into my list. These entries although less ornamental, were of more significance and closer to my heart.
After the extension, the new list included – start a school, start a technology center for elders, start a healthcare facility and last but not the least – start a journalism based entity which will change the way how information was presented to the readers/users. By a fortunate stroke of serendipity, I found Deepu (that’s what I call Jaideep lovingly) who had a bigger and better vision to establish a journalism based startup. With the help of Deepu to a large extent, KYS was founded on September 20th 2012. Two weeks later, on Deepavali, the KYS Website was launched. Now, after a year of its inception, I guess I can proudly do the following on my list:
Start a Journalism Based Entity that would try to change the world ✓
What’s the profit that you’re going to make?
In today’s world, where Internet business driven companies are at its peak, everybody is naturally inclined to profit making through their startups. But we had a dream, a vision which would keep KYS away from all those things. I still remember the discussion we had whether to allow advertisements or not on KYS. The decision has paid off today – one of the important aspects of our readers’ retention has been Ads Free UI of KYS.
Our Aim was to educate/empower our users through the quality of our content. After the inception, people started asking me about the purpose of whole idea or what was the profit that I’m going to make with KYS. The only answer I used to give them was that our idea is not being driven by the desire for money, but is being driven by our passion – Passion to serve society, passion to inspire people, passion to deliver quality content to the readers.
Start of the innings
The journey started with Mrs Vyjayanthi Kashi being interviewed on a beautiful morning which also happened to be Gandhi Jayanthi, 2012. It has been an amazing ride since then. I remember me and Deepu being a little nervous as it was our first interview. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience. After that, it was a journey which never stopped. It was a pleasure to be a part of many interviews. Each interview was a learning experience.
One interview which I would cherish would be that of Shakuntala Devi. In spite of being in a critical health condition, she gave us an appointment for the interview. Few months after the interview, she expired. On hearing the news of her death, casually I browsed through her interview again. That was the moment when I realized – You can kill a man, but you can never kill his ideology.
Building process
We always wanted our style of journalism to be unique. Hence, we came up with certain set of protocols or practices that needed to be followed during and after the interviews. It was decided that after each interview, it should be made mandatory to send the draft copy of the interview to the interviewee – a quality which most of our stars have liked and admired. Next thing was the punctuality – we vowed never ever to be late for an interview appointment. Thirdly, we vowed never ever to ask our stars about their personal/controversial stories which are common with the Page-3 obsessed hungry media these days. Fourth, as a token of love/appreciation we started giving mementos to all our stars and we made it a custom after each interview to ask our stars to write a few encouraging words about us along with their autograph and photograph. All these things were a great learning experience in this beautiful journey.
Congratulation KYS !!!
The article of Ramesh Srivats was our big breakthrough. The reach of the article was so immense that our servers were not able to handle the traffic on the day of his article release. It was a good lesson for us, and we upgraded our infrastructure to handle those kinds of traffic. Kiran Sir, our mentor, stood by and guided us through all those struggles. Later, with the article of Mrs. Vani, we gathered a new genre of readers – a genre in which readers stood united against a cause and addressed the concerns of the society. KYS getting featured in the Bangalore Mirror Daily & New Indian Express was another feather in the cap for us. Today, we are extremely proud of where KYS stands and with tremendous opportunities lined up for us, I would like to say these four words to my fellow people at KYS :
GO, COUNQUER THE WORLD !!!
I would like to thank and congratulate Jaideep, Kiran, Ashwin, Pranita, Jenifer, Kiran E, Nachiketh, Mani, Vinod, Iqlas, Akshay, Raghavendra, Ruchi, Shipra and Divya for being part of this amazing journey. It has been an exciting ride till now. Definitely, it will be even more exciting journey ahead !!
Love you all !!
