Daastan launched its very first Literary Fellowship program in the fall of 2016, which turned out to be a huge success and an instant hit. This not only benefited the fellows, who were given multiple opportunities and exposed to a plethora of resources and networks, but it also helped the team of Daastan meet a very cool bunch of people seeking to improve the landscape of the literary industry in Pakistan. Upon their graduation some of them were also be taken on board – especially those who wanted to join in the cool happenings of our space.
The Second Batch:
With another year coming to a close, the team decided to make the Fellowship a recurring one, so as to spread the message of the revival of literature, by enabling people who were interested to come see it first hand and become a part of it as well. With the announcement of Batch Two of the Literary Fellowship program, submissions rolled in by the dozens. This time around, the team received more than a hundred applications, double the amount received for the debut batch. The applications were screened thoroughly, and around 40 people were shortlisted and called for an online interview session. A friendly discussion was carried out with each to determine their passion for literature, their willingness to work for the achievements of their dreams, and their past involvements in our field. It was an even harder job to screen for and select the bunch that would be joining Daastan for the next three months, but eventually 25 people were chosen to comprise the second batch of the Literary Fellowship. The selection was made on the basis of their clarity of vision, their justification for the claims they provided in the application form, as well as their relevant experience.
Poster for the Second Batch of the Literary Fellowship
The Literary Achievements of the Fellowship:
This time around, the fellowship
was divided into four categories, i.e. Marketing, Editing, Digitizing and
Design, and each fellow was made a part of the module they favored and/or the
module best fit for them according to their experience. What came together was
a group astounding in abilities which, after being groomed, bagged multiple
prizes. Two of the fellows, Ms Maham Syedain, and Ms Arooha Arif won
Silver and Bronze in US Story Writing competition, and Ms. Nadia won
an
Urdu writing competition on The Ancient Souls. Several of the fellows were
featured all over the digital media for their different achievements, and a big
bunch of them went on to graduate as well. Chief among them was Ms. Fatema Bhaiji, who launched a
Queer-Lit magazine designed specifically for literature focused on the LGBTQ+
community named “Outcast”.
Another fellow, Ms. Arooha Arif, launched a book club in her
hometown to encourage readership and connect like-minded people, and yet
another graduate Ms. Sameen Aziz launched a digitizing company by the name of “Harf Nagar”, focused on
providing digitizing and bringing handwritten content to print ready form. Many
of the graduates were hired into the team and given various positions. The
highlights of the second batch’s achievements can be viewed here.
In between the flurry of activity that was 2017 for the team of Daastan, the Founder Syed Ommer Amer must have found a momentary lull in activity, and that was enough for him to set Daastan on a course previously uncharted on but one it had full potential to tread. This road taken was the application to pitch in Pakistan’s first ever business reality show, in front of a panel of most distinguished, recognized, and successful businessmen of our industry, for an amount of 1 crore (10 Million) Rupees.
Daastan’s Delegation:
For most just the introduction of the TV show, with its intimidating numbers and seemingly very hard to impress investors, would be enough to faze them and make them reconsider trying their luck. For our team, it was that very thing which lit the fire that was to guide us through all that was to come. And so, after successfully clearing the ‘audition’ for the final pitch, team Daastan made its way to Lahore for the final showdown. The delegation that was to pitch on TV consisted of Waneeza Zaheer – a senior designer at Daastan passionate about literature and fully dedicated to helping Daastan scale newer and higher heights – and Syed Ommer Amer, the founder of the company, who requires no introduction except one: he is a force to be reckoned with, especially where his dreams and the future of literary industry are concerned.
Mr. Naeem Zamindar (middle), with Mr. Syed Ommer Amer (left) and Ms. Waneeza Zaheer (right)
The Pitch that Lead to the Win:
The wait for the final presentation lasted all day, with the pitch itself lasting more than half an hour. The team received commendation and applause from most of the investors present, which included Salim Ghauri, CEO Netsol, who especially praised Ommer’s speaking abilities, and Rabeel Warraich who mentioned how the team’s ready responses to all the questions posed were a pleasant surprise. Three out of four businessmen present did not step up to invest, however their space was filled in by Mr. Naeem Zamindar, CEO Acumen Pakistan and Chairman, Pakistan Board of Investment, when he offered 25,000 USD in return for 20% equity, and an unlimited amount of support to help breakthrough any ceiling Daastan might encounter. The team was able to negotiate it down to 15%, and the deal was celebrated.
Daastan scores an investment of 25,000 USD on Idea Croron Ka
In the wake of the success of the first two seasons of Daastan’s signature story writing competition “The Stories Untold”, one of which landed the team a fund of significant enough amount to bring the shortlisted authors of the competition to print, Daastan launched the third magical (pun intended) season of The Stories Untold sponsored by Aurochs, in collaboration with Words and Metaphors, during the summer of 2017. It was the team’s plan to continue fueling the fire of literature and encourage the creative ones among the public to squeeze out all they had and a bit more, and spin it into a tale. By continuing to hold the contest biannually, Daastan had uncovered a whole trove of creative writers and word magicians, who kept coming back to participate in the subsequent seasons and dazzled us with their unbounded potential.
Magical Pursuits:
Having addressed the serious and thought-provoking side of literature in the theme of the previous two seasons, the founders of Daastan decided to lighten the mood with a bit of fairy dust and themed the third season of the recurring competition, “Magical Pursuits”. This theme was picked to challenge the wildly imaginative among us, who have the creativity to step out from the door of reality into a world of magic, driven by the author’s self-made laws of the creation present there-in. Daastan made the perfect choice in the selection of the theme, as the literature of Pakistan was severely lacking in this genre, and so the entries poured in.
The Competition:
As proven by the previous competitions, hundreds of authors toiled to be a part of our family. Stories of 4000-6000 words were submitted to us in both English as well as Urdu, and all of them were screened very carefully to filter out the top few. The stories were judged mostly on the basis on the impact they created on the reader, on the writer’s ability to whip up whole plot lines and characters without loopholes, and how closely they stuck to the theme of fantasy. It was a battle of mythical levels, and the results were finally posted a couple weeks after the deadline closed.
Season 3 of Stories Untold, themed “Magical Pursuits”
In Pursuit of the Ultimate Winner:
The top 25 of English stories, and top 10 of Urdu, were thereon assigned to a team lead who acted as mentor and guided their writers to better their stories by having one-on-one sessions with them over 15 days, giving the writers a chance to strengthen their story and improve any mistake they may have made. The result was announced as top 15, followed by top 5 best stories, which trickled down to the undisputed singular winner in each language. The winning stories, True Justice by Naveed Sheharyar Khan and Kahani Jibraeel ki by Sonia Mukhtar were published in print, while the finalists were all published digitally.
Urdu Winner of Stories Untold Season 3
English Winner of Stories Untold Season 3
Want to be a part of the next Stories Untold Competition? Keep an eye out for the updates on our Facebook page!
In the summer of 2017, with the rush of incoming Stories Untold entries in the air and Daastan’s social media teeming with writers, poets, thinkers and dreamers, the team decided to dish out a series of writing prompts to encourage the flow of ideas. What started as an all too simple social media post to get conversations going, caught the eye of Daastan’s Founder, and he decided to turn it into a competition and put a reward at the end to motivate the writers even further. Thus, began the campaign of Mukhtasir Daastan, which lasted months and earned almost all those who participated goodies and discounts from various sponsors.
Magic:
A total of seven such prompt based competitions were initiated, each with a unique theme, requirements and prizes. What ensued was a flurry of creativity crushed into six-word stories. The first sponsored prompt was put up in collaboration with Jadugar and Co., a freelance graphic design company, and the theme was aptly titled “Magic”. The winners were given prizes which included discounts and a personalized typographic design.
Smiles:
The second in the series that followed was sponsored by Smiles.pk. They asked the audience to help them write their tagline, in return of a gift prize of 2500 PKR. Smiles.pk ended up choosing not one, but two winners. They liked two of the entries so much that they just couldn’t narrow it down to one.
Travel:
The third in the series of Mukhtasir Daastan was sponsored by Aurochs, a premium leather products manufacturing company which designed highly functional pieces with ease of use in mind. The theme of the six-word story competition was “Travel”. The top five finalists received a 50% off coupon on their products, while all those who participated also received a small discount as well.
Youth:
The fourth, and final one which was sponsored by another company, was held in collaboration with Forever21 magazine, a bi-monthly magazine seeking to empower youth. The magazine requested the authors to let their creativity flow, and no word limit was imposed. The winner received a gift bag in reward for her eloquently written piece on the theme “I want to be 17 again because…”
By Qissa Authors:
The last three prompts of the series were
sponsored by the authors published with Qissa. They fished out one lettered
theme of their books, such as “Adapt” for Unveiling the Unknown by Tooba
Arshad, and asked the writers to come up with a heart touching six-word-story
on it. The winners and participants were awarded multiple levels of discounts on
the books from which the themes were taken.
The final gift though, came from Daastan. It was promised from the very start of the series of Mukhtasir Daastan, that the team would hand pick the best ones out of all those who participated, compile, and publish it into a book, eternalizing the bird-like thoughts of each of the writers featured in it. If you are a writer and want to see your work published, drop us a message on Daastan!
Since its launch in the fall of 2016, many writers, novelists, readers and literary geeks have cozily nested at Qissa, making it a home for their writings. And it is for all these like-minded fellows that Daastan continually strive to improve the experience of the platform. Each day, we focused on opening our doors in newer and better ways to the public invested in improving their lives by incorporating literature into it. It is with this attitude of constantly bettering the platform and making the experience unlike any our community had ever experienced online before, that we incorporated a search bar, advance analytics of our author’s work, and many such nitty-gritty details. We addressed the issues that arose regarding the reading experience on phone browsers and made it seamless so it was available to all, no matter their mode of access. We also refined the website rating module so the authors could receive constructive criticism as well as due praise related to their works.
Founder, Mr. Syed Ommer Amer, on Qissa
Qissa 2.0:
The second big upgrade that followed, in the same year of its launch, was the incorporation of an in-built editor on the Qissa dashboard that supported not only English but also most of the major regional languages such as Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Punjabi etc., which put us ahead of any reading tool available online, enabling us to empower the writers of the languages and reawaken multiple dying literature industries, immortalizing them digitally.
Qissa 3.0 – The Talent Pool:
In the year 2017, our focus was furthering the betterment of the platform. We envisioned to raise it from a simple reading tool and self-publishing platform and introduce a game changing feature – Pakistan’s first creative marketplace that highlighted the professionals from our family in all their glory. The marketplace, otherwise dubbed as the ‘Talent Pool’ contained differently skilled and talented individuals, previously hidden behind the curtain, visible only to the team of Daastan. With Qissa 3.0, they were finally brought out into the open along with their gifts, including their previous writings and work-related history. Any individual or business looking for content solutions, an editor, a digitizer, or any such tailored request related to the industry, could now easily browse among our hand-picked finest, who were updated periodically, and hire them as per their requirements. They could also reach out to us on Daastan to get a quote.
The Finest Editors from the Core Team
Daastan’s Editorial Board
Literary Professionals of the Talent Pool
Always on the Top of its Game:
Near the end of the year, Qissa faced a huge data loss, in which more than 1000 accounts, and 70 books were lost. What followed was weeks of sleepless nights for the team, which eventually led to the restoration of most of the work, as well as the inclusion of a security system so as to ensure no such incident would ever happen again. Qissa not only pulled through, but also came out better.
#IStandWithDaastan
We ran a social media campaign where we recovered more than 70% of our lost data manually through community support. We keep stressing it again and again that we are nothing without the support of our community. Thank you everyone who stepped forward, when we needed you the most.
