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.
Having scaled the platform of Qissa to a considerable level, and upgraded it significantly to amp up its technology, Daastan started turning heads in the big communities. Within 3 months of the launch of Qissa, Daastan surpassed 10,000 likes on Facebook, its message reaching the nooks and crannies of Pakistan. With our team members being invited to high level events as speakers, and media coverage that had us tuning to one or another channel on a frequent basis to catch news related to us, it was high time that Daastan and Qissa Self-Publishing received recognition at esteemed platforms.
Connected Pakistan Conference:
The first such acknowledgement came as a nomination for the Best StartUp Award, being held at the Connected Pakistan Conference. The individuals who nominated us for the award remained unspecified, and even our Founder Mr. Syed Ommer Amer was left surprised when he received their invitation for the occasion which was to be held in Comsats, Abbottabad. This was the second time this conference of tech enthusiasts was being held, where dignitaries from various communities were invited and spoke to the crowd present. The highlight of the event was Daastan winning the Best Startup Award in the conference, which the company shared with very few notable startups present within the crowd. The conference was attended by a delegation from Daastan, consisting of Mr. Syed Ommer Amer, Founder and Mr. Nauman Shahid, MD.
Team Daastan comprising of Nauman Shahid (left) and Syed Ommer Amer (right), holding up the Best Startup Award
SATHA Innovation Award:
The second award came from an even more prestigious source. An international firm by the name of South Asian Triple Helix Foundationawarded Daastan a SATHA Innovation Award to applaud the effort that the team had made to help Daastan spread its wings, and the positive impact it had created on the lives of all those associated with the company. Along with being a symbol of hope and home to innovation, Daastan was serving as fuel for the dying embers of the literary industry. The award was received by Syed Ommer Ammer, who was accompanied by Ms. Spugmai Alee Khattak, serving as Literary Critic in Daastan.
As the winter of 2016 rolled in, with the Qissa self-publishing up and running and Daastan’s founder Syed Ommer Ammer enrolled in Telenor’s Velocity Program looking to scale the company and redefine the industry as per Daastan’s vision, the team decided to kickstart a fellowship program. The program, dubbed the Literary Fellowship, would enlist and take on fresh minds who were seeking to disrupt and change the game in the literary industry, but were lacking the opportunity or the proper guidance to do so. The team, having many such obstacles while trying to reach out to the public themselves, wanted to pave the way and make it easier for those who wanted to follow in their suit, and equip them with cheers and support rather than rejections and sneers.
The Launch and Subsequent Response:
The call for submissions for the debut batch went out in the September of 2016, and to our surprise more than 50 people applied for the program. Each submission was carefully pored over, to make sure the group that would be a part of the team in the upcoming three months were doers and believers who could push past their comfort zones. They were initially shortlisted to a group of almost 25 people, and after an interview session, the number was reduced down to the final 15, and that is when the magic began.
Literary Fellows of the Debut Batch
The Course of the Fellowship:
Over the next three months, the mentors from Daastan laboured day in and day out with their assigned mentees. Each fellow was given tailor made tasks to enhance their specific skill set, along with targeted guidance to help them do their work efficiently. The fellows were encouraged to come up with projects of their own, which Daastan would help them develop, launch, market and scale so at the end of the three-month period they would have a sustainable venture of their own to build on. After a few months it became clear, the fellowship program had become a huge hit.
Success Stories:
The success stories of the debut batch included Ms. Mahnoor Naseer, who co-founded a global digital publishing platform by the name of The Ancient Souls, and also helped us set up operations in India. She went on to become an Editor in Chief at Daastan, and train the next batch of fellows. Another graduate, Ms. Aroosa Mushtaq Malik, was video interviewed live on PTV World. Ms. Armin Bilquis, the youngest fellow of the batch, brought her poetry book to Qissa, and Daastan helped raise funds to bring “Melted Kaleidoscopes” to print. Order a copy here to support the author.
A year and a half into the struggle that was Daastan, and very many rejections but also quite a few notable achievements later, Daastan finally launched its self-publishing website by the name of Mera Qissa. The website was to be a writer’s as well as a reader’s one-stop-solution for publishing their work in print ready formats, which would then be refined and edited to perfection, ready to be read online by the thriving amount of readers that visited the website in search for quality literature. It was an all in one solution for writers across the country as it helped them build a profile by putting up a bio, garnering readership, and also enabled the readers to give the authors constructive reviews on their work. It also helped the writers earn revenue from opportunities furnished by Daastan’s client base, which ranged from various genres of content writings to digitizing handwritten works or ghost writing for their clients.
The Plans Offered:
The services offered by the portal were categorized into three plans according to their needs, and could cater to any and all of the writers who wished to get published. The Basic Plan was free, it only required that you sign up on the Qissa website, upload your work, wait for the editorial process to be completed and voila – at the end of all this your work would be published online for all Qissa viewers to read, and you would also get access to other writers’ work published on the website. The Pro and Pro+ plan came at a minimal cost per month and with it your account would be upgraded to receive additional benefits such as the ability to sell services online, as well as getting advertising credit. It also included a pro online reader which offered more features while reading eBooks, and the pro plus members also got to receive a monthly swag box featuring all the raging goodies of Daastan’s literary empire.
Baby Steps Turning into Leaps and Bounds:
The portal upon its launch had more than 30 stories available online, most of them from Daastan’s recent story-writing competition ‘The Stories Untold’. It also had works published by Daastan throughout the previous year. By the end of 2016, we aimed to have published more than 100 books and signed up over 1000 writers. Within Qissa’s first few days of initiation, it received more than a thousand visitors, with 5 minutes being the average time spent per person on the website.
Qissa aimed to be a medium which gave voice to those among us whose voice remained unheard, and words unspoken. If you have ever felt the same way, learn more about what we do by signing up on Qissa.
