Jasjit Chhatwal, a Hyderabad based entrepreneur runs a hugely successful venture called News Access. Jasjit is a merchant navy officer, an alumni of the T.S. Rajendra. Jasjit is one of those highly intelligent and reflective persons who’s a thinker par excellence and reminds me of a modern day Socrates. He put his 2 skills together and came up with the concept of News Access. Making News available to seafarers.
Today, you may wonder “What’s the big deal?!”, but a decade ago, the big deal was that ships had no access to news, except when they touched port. And then too, they would get the news of the country in which they were. And only of that day. Hence there was no connection or continuity. News Access solved this problem by sending a summary of India related news daily. The concept took some time to catch on, but when it did, it became popular very quickly. Today it covers well over 500 ships, and has been growing from strength to strength. The current avatar covers customized portfolio, multiple countries, multiple sports, city editions, ...
Interestingly, today news is much more easily accessible on ships. And one would conclude that News Access would lose its relevance and popularity. However, the exact opposite is happening. Its becoming even more popular. My guess is its presentation. Most of us love to go through a News Access kind of paper. A summary of important news in 1 page. You don’t have to worry about going through reams of paper or websites and search for what could be important or interesting.
Recently Jasjit has a brand new idea. Migrating the concept to the world at large. And since news in a summary is easily available on TV, his idea revolved around “Ops and Eds”, which is the cool version of “Opinion and Editorials”. Jasjit and his team goes through editorials of several newspapers and magazines every day. They then send a summary of these with a link to the original article. The mail arrives in your inbox, and when you have 5 – 10 minutes to spare, you can go through the mail, click on those Ops and Eds that seem interesting and quickly read them.
I’ve always wanted to read opinions and editorials. Not only are they the most meaningful part of any newspaper, they are also the most interesting. They show perspectives and views of a wide variety of people. From journalists and editors, to politicians and businessmen, to spiritual leaders and conmen. In short, all shades of society. And since mydailycolumns has been launched, I’ve managed to read quite a few editorials. Not as many as I’d like to, but I’m getting there.
Its an awesome site and the service is very valuable. Best of all, it’s Free. I have no idea why Jasjit is investing time and money and giving us such a useful service. But I guess, that’s what makes him a visionary. You should check it out. Go to mydailycolumns and sign up. And if you like it, please send Jasjit an email telling him so. I guess at the very least, we should appreciate the things we like. It might keep him going, and we can continue to enjoy our daily cuppa with MyDailyColumns.
p.s.: An article appeared in "The Hindu" about News Access on August 4, 2001. Check it out.
p.p.s.: August 14, 2011 - mydailycolumns pulls the plug. :-( RIP. :-((
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