Karadi Tales – Adapting to the Digital Age
We’ve been through that stage in life where all we wanted to do
was emulate Superman, our best friend was Scooby Doo and our biggest rival was
Bluto. Yes, right about the time we had milk teeth and although going to school
was such a pain, we were gobbling up knowledge at an almost frightening pace,
and a lot of it from our fictional friends.
Karadi Tales is a
desi children’s publishing house based in the sweltering city of Chennai. It
was started in 1996 as the brainchild of Shobha Viswanath, C. P. Viswanath and
C. P. Narayan to create a space for Indian
culture in the child’s mind, providing meaningful entertainment
alternatives for kids and families and bringing fun into the development
of early learning skills.
A few die-hard fans would recall the first title of
Karadi Tales was launched in December 1996, featuring Naseeruddin Shah as
Karadi the bear. Since then, there’s been no looking back. Over the years, they
have brought together some big names including Gulzar, Usha Uthup, Nandita Das,
Udit Narayan, SP Balasubramaniam, Shankar Mahadevan, Vidya Balan, Jaaved
Jaaferi, Boman Irani and many more.
Unraveling the story
behind the creation of a fictional and central character named ‘Karadi’, Manasi
Subramaniam, editor at Karadi tales says, “Even
though the bear is such an integral part of the Indian forest, we have very few
childrens’ stories with a bear in them. So we thought we could create a
storyteller bear – a wise, gentle grandfather-like creature. Karadi (which
means bear in Tamil) had a wonderful ring to it.”
The team at Karadi
tales is a small one aided
along by a host of wise educational developers from the Karadi Path Educational
Company and a team of sales and administrative staff. “The
quadrangle editorial team is led by publishing director Shobha Viswanath, a
writer, a teacher and an all-round nice person.” Besides
creative director Narayan Parasuram, who composes all the music for the Karadi
Tales audiobooks and DVDs, the team of editors comprises of Annie Besant and
Manasi herself. “Our visualisers are Vandana
Shah and Rajesh Kumar. Both of them are wizards at PhotoShop,” says
Manasi giving a round-up of the team.
One would imagine
the onset of the Cartoon Network revolution in the late ‘90’s posing a threat
for Karadi tales, which at that stage, mainly relied on audio books. Manasi
however disagrees saying, “The classics never really grow
old. We’ve all grown up listening to folktales and legends from our
grandparents and it’s only natural for us to want to pass them on to our
children and their children! What makes a Karadi retelling different is largely
the audio factor.”
There also seems to
be optimism towards the reception of Karadi Path 3E,
a programme that can be implemented by all schools, the focus mainly being
English medium matriculation schools where English is being taught to
first generation learners.
Talking about their
evolving revenue model, Manasi says, “It
used to be retail, but now more and more it is sales through the digital space
through varied platforms such as iPads, Kindle, ebooks etc. We also do sell
through online retail chains such as Flipkart, Infibeam and our own websites.”
When they started
off, Karadi tales Stories,
conceived and initiated by personal money of the founders, was promoted merely
by word of mouth. “We now promote actively on our
website and via social networking through Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, Google
Plus, Blogger etc. We often rely on individuals who are Karadi evangelists in
spreading the good audiobook,” adds Manasi.
About the future of
the company’s products, Manasi says, “In
five years, I hope we would have trail-blazed a picture book industry in this
country, just as we did with audiobooks, making beautiful, sophisticated
picture books available, affordable and accessible to all children.”
They are also developing a set of exciting applications for the iPad, Kindle
and other multimedia platforms.
Post Your Ad Here
Comments