Name: 【TED】Chiki Sarkar: How India's smartphone revolution is creating a new generation of readers and writers (How India's smartphone revolution is creating a new generation of readers and writers | Chiki Sarkar)
Uploaded: 2019-01-31T21:38:01.000Z
Duration: 10 min 7 s
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Whether you're in a subway, a park, an airport, a restaurant,

Adverbs of degree

all of you have a phone in your hands or maybe in your pockets.

every time I walked out of my office block.

I was surrounded by a sea of 20-something professionals

And not a single one had a book in their hands.

And this used to make me very, very frustrated.

The first man I fell in love with was Mr. Darcy.

I first read "Harry Potter" when I was 21, on a summer break from college.

And I remember the first night I spent in a little flat I bought in my mid-20s,

and I spent the whole night reading "The Da Vinci Code."

And then I'm going to make a terrible confession:

even today, when I'm low, I get into bed with "War and Peace."

But I was also like all those people I saw around me:

and soon my app knew that I needed a monthly dose of diapers.

And when I did the long commute back home like most urban Indians,

I passed the time on WhatsApp, video-chatting my twin.

I was part of an extraordinary revolution that was happening in India.

Indians are the second-largest users of smartphones in the world.

And data prices have been slashed so radically

that half of urban India and even a part of rural India

now have a smartphone with a data connection in their hands.

you'll know that "half" means, like, all of America or something.

And these numbers are just growing and growing and growing.

And what they're doing is empowering Indians

And yet, none of these changes that I was seeing around me

were reflected in my world, my world of books.

And Indians just didn't seem to want to read for fun.

So if you look at all the best-seller lists in India,

what you'll always find in the best-seller list

Imagine if you found the SAT guides as the "New York Times" number one seller,

And yet, the smartphone revolution was creating readers and writers

Indians were writing and sharing and reading all kinds of things:

And as I read and shared these things, I wondered to myself,

"Could I get these writers and these readers,

and my job as the publisher of India's top publishing company,

I moved into a single large room in a cheap bohemian district of Delhi,

And there, I set up a new kind of publishing house.

A new kind of publishing house needs a new kind of reader

And so I asked myself, "What would this new reader want?

the very qualities they seem to want from their online services,

indeed, the qualities they seem to want from life today?"

I knew that my readers were always on the go.

I'd have to fit into their lifestyle and schedules.

Would they actually want to read a 200-page book?

Or would they want something a little bit more digestible?

especially when it comes to their online reading.

I knew I had to give them books under a dollar.

And so my company was formed, and it was born.

It was a platform where we created a list of stories designed for the smartphone,

but it also allowed amateur writers to upload their own stories,

so they could be showcased along with the very writers

And we could also enter into other people's digital platforms.

imagine you're a receptionist, you've had a long day at work,

you book your cab in your ride-hailing app,

and you get into your car, and you lie back on your seat,

And you find a set of stories waiting for you, timed to your journey.

in a relatively conservative city like Lucknow, which lies near Delhi.

【TED】Chiki Sarkar: How India's smartphone revolution is creating a new generation of readers and writers (How India's smartphone revolution is creating a new generation of readers and writers | Chiki Sarkar)

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【TED】Chiki Sarkar: How India's smartphone revolution is creating a new generation of readers and writers (How India's smartphone revolution is creating a new generation of readers and writers | Chiki Sarkar)

relevant

extraordinary

journey

imagine