Launching the Pratham Books’ Mobile Reading Application
10 years ago
International Literacy Day is just around the corner. It is undoubtedly the busiest time of the year for the Pratham Books team. Serving so many Reading Champions who are getting ready to bring a ‘story delight’ to thousands of children is a big responsibility. Our office is buzzing with activity with event co-ordination, getting banners and posters ready, sending out activity suggestions and last minute additions to the ever growing list of books to be shipped out adds to the chaos.
Every year, much to our dismay, disappointments happen. The couriers don’t reach on time, the speed post slows down or some books just get lost in transit. Also, a lot of times many people come in late with a request to become a Reading Champion and it is too late for us to send them a copy of the book. Usually, an e-copy of the book is always kept handy and duly mailed out for such occasions although sometimes, even for that it’s a little too late.
So, what do you do if you read about our One Day One Story event just 24 hours before the event? Thankfully, we now have a solution for that.
For some time now, Pratham Books has been toying with the idea of launching a mobile application for our books. The application would be an extension of our efforts to take our books as far out, and in as many ways as we can.
So one day, we sat down with the good folks from CISCO Systems and together conceptualized a Mobile Reading Application for young readers. Just in time for our annual celebration of the International Literacy Day, the first version of the mobile application is up and running! *drum rolls*
24 hours before the event, or just 24 minutes before, all you have to do is to go to Google Play Store (for android devices) and download the application and voila, here is ‘Takloo, the Little Salt Seller‘ (in six languages) on your mobile or tablet screens. In its first avatar, the application hosts a limited number of books but that repository will only increase. A couple of more books are also present for quick reading.
As much as this reading application gives you the flexibility and comfort of reading books that fit in your pocket, it also gives us the means to take our books and stories to the farthest corners of the country through technology. Books are finally travelling in bits and bytes through fiber optic cables to reach destinations far off, in record time.
Download our mobile reading application at:
Happy reading and sharing!
A big shout out to the team of young and dynamic engineers of CISCO Systems , mainly Khalid Imam, Nancy Jain, Ashish Bhatiya, Ritesh Singh, Saurabh Rajpal, Bharat Goel, Vidisha Sahijwani ,Sudha Narayanan, Kaushal Kishore, Srinivas Boddukuri, Marudhu Sahana E and Dili Rathi and their guides Anil Neeleshwar, V C Gopalratnam,Dharmendra Rangain and Rohini Kamath. They put together their technological skills for a larger social impact. They have been great thought- partners to us.
