Taking Impact To The Next Level. Once Again.

The Better India is a digital media startup focusing on India’s most inspiring stories. We do not measure ourselves in terms of number of views. We measure ourselves with the impact we generate with every story.

What started as a personal blog has now become a vibrant and busy hub for people to learn about change-makers, for readers to collaborate and for ideas to flourish. While we’ve already witnessed the lives of 1200 farmers being impacted with just one story of ours, the last 2 months have been significant because of the unprecedented impact our stories have created! Here then is the list of change brought about by the stories of The Better India in the last 2 months?—?made possible by you, our reader.

A School For Special Children In Mumbai Gets Recognition & More

This story of ours is about how one lady is working with special children in Mumbai’s slums and helping them get the education they deserve.

The Impact?

Volunteering & Donations: Many parents (including those of special children) showed their love and supported Urmi Foundation via donations and by sharing new methods in special education and therapy.

Spread Awareness: A lot of people stated that they were clueless about the conditions of the special children living in slums. Our article created enough awareness that Urmi Foundation got 3 dedicated volunteers to work with them on a regular basis!

“My family members were not really aware about what I actually do and what I go through on a daily basis. This article raised their respect for me. Now they understand what I do being a founder of Urmi Foundation.”?—? Sonalee Shyamsunder, founder of Urmi Foundation

An American Girl and Used Bars Of Soap In India

Erin Zaikis is working on addressing sanitation and health issues in Mumbai’s slums in a very unique way (which involves usage of discarded bars of soap!)

The Impact of our story?

We let Erin say it in her own words:

Beyond my wildest dreams actually! There was so much interest and positive enthusiasm from readers all over India?—?from individuals and NGOs alike. We’ve also connected with additional Mumbai hotels because of this, so we are already increasing our reach because of the article. We are planning to expand our operations to Delhi and/or Bangalore within the next year or so because of how much excitement we’ve seen from this article alone! Notably the thing that excited me the most was the flood of press inquiries after this. A German TV network called Galileo is sending a team to cover the story of one of our employees. We also received an inquiry from Times Group in Mumbai and a radio show (RED FM), plus reporters from First Post and Gulf News seeking to cover the story as well. So it’s been a HUGE press boost?—?something I could’ve NEVER dreamed about. Perhaps most meaningful was the number of Facebook messages and emails from total strangers who thanked me for doing this work and said it made them recommit to doing something they were passionate about. That felt great.

Our stories are creating a global impact because good ideas are never restricted by boundaries.

An entrepreneur’s start-up gets traction

Bakey’s is an edible cutlery initiative started by Narayana Peesapati.

The Impact of our story?

Narayana got about 20 orders on the day the article was published. He also got orders from Japan and Germany, along with an interview call from the BBC.

Virality: “The number of mails was overwhelming. The appreciation is even more. I was travelling in the lift with my neighbour’s son and daughter-in-law. They moved in recently. I saw her staring into my face and I was embarrassed initially. She then asked, “Uncle, do you make edible cutlery?” The sudden question jolted me. I blurted “Yes. But, why do you ask?” With a sense of pride in her eyes, she said, “I saw you on Facebook”. I learnt the story has gone viral almost immediately.”?—?Narayana

Overseas interest: “Now, far away from from the US, Canada, Switzerland, Australia and many more countries, the response was the same. All of them being happy that at least now there is an alternative to plastic. TBI indeed increased the levels of awareness. It also generated more media interest. BBC did an interview in Hindi. German Press Trust asked for pictures, since they also want to publish this story. The Observer, UK made similar request. NDTV already published their story. Hindustan Times is on the anvil. Same is the case with Deccan Chronicle. The credit of triggering this massive media interest entirely lies with you.”?—?Narayana

An Engineer’s Work At A Railway Station Went Viral

Gaurang Damani adopted a railway station and transformed it in 4 months!

The Impact of our story?

“Your article helped tremendously! It was amazing to see the article being shared, liked and commented by thousands. I got a lot of emails. Some of them offered to volunteer and 2 of them offered financial assistance for our next project. I also got invited to speak at a few places. OpIndia printed an online story and a few other print-journalists also picked up the story and may publish about it. Infact, Doordarshan picked up the story and wants to show it on 15 Aug! So overall, your story did wonders and TBI has an awesome reach.” shared Gaurang.

‘Feeding India’ gets 200+ volunteers from the TBI community

Here’s an interesting story we wrote about the Feeding India team that takes excess food from events and feeds it to the poor.

The Impact?

• Feeding India’s Facebook page likes increased in a week: 600+
• Volunteer requests received in a week: 200+
• Got approached by Livemint for a story
• Approached by ShaadiMagic, an online wedding organizer website
• Invited in a reality show in Mumbai and won a prize money of Rs. 1,21,000

“These are a few amazing things which happened to us by your article! We are really thankful to TBI. Platforms such as yours can do wonders for a growing organization which is working hard to see a better India!”?—? Feeding India team

We believe in the power of writing and we write to drive impact. These are only some of the things we managed to do by sharing hundreds of inspiring stories over the last 2 months. And we believe that the credit entirely goes to our readers who make this happen, our readers who have made a conscious choice to be a part of this movement that drives impact.

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