PlanetRead is dedicated to reading and literacy development around the world and has a solid track record of work in India. The organisation has the simple vision of a reading planet – a planet where everyone can read and have access to interesting and affordable reading opportunities in both his/her native or other language(s).

 
PlanetRead was originally created around the idea of Same Language Subtitling (SLS), now a globally recognized innovation for mass literacy and reading development on TV. SLS for literacy was first conceived and researched in 1996 at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Then PlanetRead pioneered the concept of “Same-Language Subtitling” (SLS) for mass literacy, by suggesting its implementation on the immensely popular Bollywood film songs on TV in India.

 
This not-for-profit organization registered in CA, USA and in India contributes to literacy worldwide by innovating and implementing simple, scalable, and cost-effective solutions, especially using mass media and information technologies. They have already used SLS on several song-based TV programs on Doordarshan, India’s national broadcaster. The main target group is the early-literates, people who are officially “literate” but who cannot read, for example, the headlines of a newspaper.

 
PlanetRead’s “karaoke” approach to literacy provides automatic and regular reading practice to over 200 million early-literates in India. In addition, nearly 270 million illiterate people are motivated to become literate.

 
IIT Kanpur alumnus Dr Brij Kothari is the co-founder of PlanetRead. Brij grew up in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry and got a Masters in Physics at IIT Kanpur, a Masters in Development Communication and a Ph.D. in Education from Cornell University. He laid the foundation for the SLS project as an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) in its Centre for Educational Innovation.

 
Brij is an Ashoka Fellow and the President of PlanetRead, a non-profit involved in scaling SLS efforts in India and other countries. He is also the CEO of BookBox Inc, a for-profit social venture producing children’s animated stories in more than 25 languages. He co-founded PlanetRead.org and BookBox.com as a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University.

 
To read about the work PlanetRead is doing, visit www.planetread.org