Profile: Making Plan A Work

At the age of 26, Upasana Makati says she sleeps well at night knowing that she has made a meaningful difference to the lives of those who have read her English lifestyle magazine for about three years now.

What’s the big deal about that? Simply that they are visually impaired.

Upasana, founder of White Print, India’s first English lifestyle magazine in braille that prints 400 copies today in association with the National Association for the Blind (NAB).

White Print reaches out to blind readers not only in the metros but even in remote cities across the country such as Pudukkottai, Hubli, Ganjam and Darjeeling, to name a few.

Convincing Others
As a young entrepreneur who started out on her own, Upasana recalls how her biggest challenge initially had been to convince people, from NAB to corporates, to take her seriously. “Being a woman entrepreneur was never a problem!” she says. “What stood in my way was the perception I had set out to create at my age,” she says. In fact, that’s her feeling about women entrepreneurs. “The perception that women entrepreneurs always have to prove themselves in a man’s world needs to change too!” she says.

Upasana’s quest from the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey has been to establish that India needs a mainstream English lifestyle magazine for the blind that should be treated at par with any other publication. Though it was a tall task she had set out to achieve, what saw her through was her perseverance and never-say-die attitude that has been a trait from her very childhood.

From taking initiatives in extracurricular activities, Upasana always felt that she needed to do something more than she already was. “Even though I took up a lot of voluntary work, it was as though I was seeking something that I could not put a finger on.”

A year later she found herself in Mumbai with a job in a public relations firm, only to have the familiar sense of unrest within her. Her eureka moment came late one night when she lay in bed after finishing a book. “The thought struck me that the visually impaired in India have nothing to read in their leisure time.” A quick search online revealed that even though India was home to 15 million blind people, there was not a single newspaper or magazine for them. She knew this was her chance to make a difference.

Excited, she landed up at the NAB to tell them about her idea and though they were surprised and unsure at first, given her young age and her sightedness, they sent her off saying they would be glad to support it if she managed funding. Undeterred by the mammoth responsibility, Upasana started talking to the visually impaired, trying to figure out what content they would like to read. Simultaneously she wrote to corporate houses to discuss advertising possibilities for a braille magazine.

“My biggest challenge was to convince corporations that advertising for the magazine had to come from their advertising spend and was not from the CSR budget. Thankfully for her, while most corporates were skeptical, some bought into the idea. The first breakthrough was when, after writing to 200 corporations, she hit gold with the Raymond group, who not only advertised but also gave her a seed capital of Rs 30,000 that went into the publication of 20 copies of the first issue of the magazine, published in May 2013.

Delighted Readers
There has been no looking back since then; Today White Print has a family of enthusiastic readers who range from age 11 to 80 and constantly interact with her on what they want to read. She has established media names writing for White Print and authors such as Sudha Murthy who have given her the rights to publish her short stories.

Her perseverance has borne fruit in three years with big corporates such as the Tata Group, Aircel and Cocoa Cola India now have advertising contracts with the magazine. Last year, Coco Cola India took braille advertising to a whole new level when they inserted a jingle as a music card and used it as an ad in White Print, getting delighted responses from readers.

Even though she is yet to hit the age of 30, Upasana says she has finally found her purpose in life. Ambitious in her quiet and persevering way she believes that White Print is merely a beginning and wants it to reach every nook and cranny of the country.

And, he makes it clear that she means business; White Print is not a charitable venture but a monthly magazine that sells at a cost of Rs 30 per issue or at a subscription cost of Rs 300 annually, In the next five years Upasana dreams of publishing books for basic literacy in braille and is already authoring the first series. She dreams of a day when a visually impaired person can walk into a bookshop to pick up a book or magazine and even though it is a distant dream just now, she says the right intent and steps will make it happen.

Upasana is very clear about how to make it as an entrepreneur: “Don’t have a Plan B. Just make Plan A work.”