Literacy for a Billion in India!

by PlanetRead
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Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!
Literacy for a Billion in India!

Project Report | Dec 18, 2025
Scaling SLS through the StarDost series

By Uttara Jadeja | Communications Manager

StarDost Celebrities Collage
StarDost Celebrities Collage

Hello to all, and hope everyone is doing well!

Over the past year, Billion Readers (BIRD) has been working to amplify the reach and understanding of its core solution, Same Language Subtitling (SLS), across social platforms. Our pursuit is to make SLS a universal feature in entertainment and education, not only as an accessibility tool but as a powerful enabler of reading ease and literacy for all.

We have established a strong social media presence across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and YouTube. Our efforts have helped us gain 40K YouTube subscribers to date, with other platforms generating millions of views per month.  In November, our content reached 2.05 million views on Instagram and 2.64 million on YouTube. Based on our performance thus far, we project crossing 100K subscribers by March 2026.

A key pillar of our outreach is the StarDost series, for which we invite celebrities to read short stories for children. Each video is professionally shot and edited, and integrates SLS, bringing the power of celebrity together with the proven benefits of reading along. So far, 17 celebrated artists have partnered with us, contributing to a growing library of 30 episodes in seven Indian languages. We are building a free, vibrant library of stories for children and their families to tap into. 

On LinkedIn, we use long-form posts and Pulse articles to share the thinking and innovation behind SLS for literacy. We explore subjects like the subtitling process, the science behind SLS, our various research topics, and updates from our field initiatives. In one of our recent posts, we spotlighted our Feminist Framework, a guiding tool we use to assess how our media aligns with our values of inclusion, equality, and empowerment.

This online growth serves our main goal - to bring SLS to every new and struggling reader through the content they already love to watch. Over the past year, our digital storytelling has brought our product to millions, for free. With every new viewer, BIRD comes closer to its vision: a nation of fluent readers empowered through Same Language Subtitling.

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Organization Information

PlanetRead

Location: Pondicherry - India
Website:
Project Leader:
Brij Kothari
Founder and President
Piedmont , CA United States

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