Introducing Indian languages to children through interactive storybooks

Pridhee Kapoor Gupta is the founder and CEO of T4Tales, a company that helps Indian parents living in India and abroad to introduce Indian languages to children in their early years, through interactive storybooks. A trained molecular biologist, Pridhee started the company during her journey as a first-time parent. “I had a two-fold goal in mind. One, to capture and keep alive verses and stories that are unique to Indian languages. And two, to help Indian parents introduce Indian languages to children in their early years, which can help in improving a child’s vocabulary, listening skills and imagination,” she says.

“As we move towards a society where the medium of conversation is predominantly English, it’s no surprise that we tend to move away from our mother tongues. In many Indian households outside India, though there is great emphasis on culture and tradition, the Indian language takes a back seat,” says Pridhee. Apart from the fact that a majority of Indians continue to speak regional languages, she says that children need to know these languages because it allows them to stay connected to their roots.

The platform is also part of Pridhee’s effort to keep the concept of storytelling alive. The rise in nuclear families, two-income households and technology has allowed this tradition to take a backseat, she explains.

“Zeroing in on the story, especially for our first book, was difficult. Each story has many variations because these are part of our oral tradition. And we also had to simplify the stories in a way that children would be able to understand it and relate to it,” she says.

As of now, they have produced a total of five books, of which four are in Hindi and one is in Tamil. These books have been illustrated to make them children-friendly. For this, she collaborated with Alicia Souza and Alankrita Amaya. ”We plan to introduce more books in Tamil, Gujarati and other languages soon,” she shares.

You can find T4 Tales on Amazon and Shumee.in