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A magic box: www.pitara.com
A father's dream venture
Publication: The Gentleman
Date: January 2001
Two of the world's most important jobs also happen to be the most unrecognised and underpaid - parent and teacher. How often you have heard phrases like ' working mother ' and 'non working mothers'? As if being mother is no work at all.
Why do we consider children to be the lesser people? Why do we expect the barber to charge less to cut a child's hair? Why should not a child speak when elders are talking? Especially when they are talking about Mrs. Mehta's fake jewellery. Do we ever stop to consider that for the child the toy car accident that led to a wheel misalignment is much more catastrophic than the wine spot on our carpet?
If you want to learn tennis, you approach an expert, you buy videos, and books on the game. Do we seriously believe that learning to be a parent or a teacher is easier than learning to play tennis? Or less important?
Is there an explanation for why there are no provision for strollers in our market places, no swings in our localities, no feed back forms in our schools, no high chairs in our restaurants, no children's libraries or book stores. These were some of the issues that really bothered me when my son Siddharth started exploring the world outside his crib. I distinctly remember my wife and I spending hours in bookstores and coming back empty handed because we didn't like what we found there. I was particularly challenged because I carry a handicap of never having attending a pre- school (thank god!)
So there we were, totally challenged by the resources available to us as parents. And were convinced that we are not the only parents in the country who felt the way we did. The situation demanded serious intervention. We put together multiple plans but abandoned them for the lack of sufficient financial muscle. The only thing that made sense for me to leverage my existing web experience to create a web site for kids.
We decided to call this project pitara - which literally means a magic box, a box that constantly throws up new surprises for children. This was early 1998, even before the world web site got into popular lexicon. And most people doubted my sanity for attempting such a preposterous idea - a web site for children.
People who were concerned about my well - being always asked me about my 'revenue model'. They didn't use the word, but that is what they asked, and I used to say, 'you'll see', Then came a time, when people started believing me, we got a lot of media coverage for taking the risk and sticking our neck out. Now we are back to situation where even non-well wishers ask me about my 'revenue model', and they use the exact word. My answer continues to be the same - ' you 'll see'.
These are bad times for the Internet companies. I have personally seen the sentiment about the internet swing dramatically from unknown commodity to "millionaire" overnight "to" crash landing". Carcasses of failed ventures are strewn around us, yet we are upbeat and confident.
I believe, what is working for us is absolute passion we have for our audience and our medium - kids and the Internet. It is not the largest niche out there, but it is ours. We have an early mover advantage: we have been with it for close to three years now - that is almost since the beginning of civilization! We have stayed with our core competency of creating great content and not allowed the current market sentiment to unhinge us. We have constantly been making 'industry defining' moves. Pitara literary created the children's web space. We created web space for young children who cannot read by launching Pitara Junior - it is driven by bandwidth - friendly animation and sound. We created the worlds most dependable safe web experience through the Krowser - a 100 % safe web browser for kids. We created what has all the makings of the world's biggest collaborative web project for children - India By Kids, a project that encourages children to explore the world around them and build creative web based projects.
And this is just the beginning. Tip of the iceberg, shall we say. I am extremely excited about what the future holds for "friends of Pitara" - which includes users, well wisher and my team. Am I nuts? If you go out of your way to embrace a paranoid medium, and thrive on the uncertainties it brings, you have to be more than a little mad.
It is three in the morning as I write this, I have to catch a flight at seven, and in the interim, I have to go home for dinner and meet my family. The irony of the situation - the one single cause for the creation of Pitara- my son - doesn't get to see me much. Trust me, I am not the only one. A lot of people who are part of the magic box live like this, because they believe that pitara is a cause worthy of such commitment.
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