Old Artifacts the Basis of Indian Woman’s Innovative Business
Anusha Yadav started the Indian Memory Project in 2010 to celebrate her love for photographs, historical stories, and a passion for Indian culture. Essentially, it’s an online collection of old photos and narratives telling the history of India before 1991. The pictures and accounts come not only from men and women still living in India, but also people from countries around the world.
The project was so successful she was awarded “Innovator of the Year” last year by the India Today Group at their annual India Today Women’s Summit, according to Forbes.
“Technology became a way of receiving and dispersing content,” says Yadav. “A way to communicate with hundreds of thousands of archives around the world, and a way to reach many more people than ever imagined, of varying age groups and linguistic backgrounds.”
This past August, she was given control of the New Yorker photo department’s Instagram account and posted black and white photos from the project. They were met with widespread praise and global interest.
This success led Yadav to her newest startup project entitled, The Memory Company. This innovative strategy is a multi-platform enterprise that will incorporate design, photography, visual research, curated projects, and just about anything else of historical value that can be reproduced in some way.
She even has plans of use The Memory Company as a publishing entity for another original project which consists of accumulating old hand-written letters for a book called, “The Love Letter Project.”
Her innovative strategies revolve mainly around a storytelling element which people have been using to sell products basically since the beginning of time. The pursuit of financial success isn’t what drives her, though.
“I don’t complicate matters by getting into whether it is a great business plan or if it will sell,” Yadav said. “I just do it.”
