[100 Emerging Women Leaders] How Tanmayee Kalebar is helping children become authors

Tanmayee Kalebar, who hails from Belgaum, Karnataka, says she “had no big dreams” as a child. “I just  wanted to work in a multinational corporation (MNC) after college,” she says.     

In many ways, Kalebar towed this line until after her marriage. 

After completing her education, she worked at a financial services company in Bengaluru for two years. Later, after marriage, Kalebar and her husband started a stock broking company and an institute called Vishal Financial School--both of which they ran for about three years. 

However, her husband exited the company in 2008 as he wanted to start teaching finance. A year later, Kalebar also made an exit from these ventures to prioritise family responsibilities. 

During the 2020 lockdown, her inspiration to find her inner calling came in the form of a notebook with a story on Egyptian civilization written by her nephew.

Fascinated at this find, Kalebar started looking for platforms to publish his story, but found none. 

“Realising that many talented young writers lacked a platform to showcase their work, I decided to create one,” says Kalebar. She started ‘Stories by Children’ in November 2020 as a dedicated space for children’s literature. 

The platform aims to empower children aged between seven and 18 years, and encourage their love for storytelling by publishing them. 

“The idea started as a platform to promote writing and reading among kids. But the response was so overwhelming that in just the first month, enough children submitted their stories, leading us to organise contests and an annual novel-writing competition for ages 11–18 years,” says Kalebar. 

“We also started publishing the winning books as paperbacks,” she adds.

Instilling creativity in children 

After a registration process, each child gets their own dashboard with options to add stories, check their status, and participate in content.

Once uploaded the stories go through a review process. The platform has more than 12 reviewers on board who are principals, teachers, English graduates, and literature enthusiasts, who work on honorariums. 

Each story is assigned to a reviewer, who looks for plagiarism, duplication, AI generation, and its content. After going through this process, the story is published with “least changes, as we want to keep the essence of the child’s imagination alive,” says Kalebar.

Today, the initiative, which started off with 50 stories, has grown to publish more than 1,800 English stories for free, with over 1,000 students from all over the world registered on their website. It is seeing up to 10,000 visitors every month.

So far, Stories by Children has published four books - ‘Beyond the Blue Skies’ By Shazia Khan; ‘The Arctic Homecoming’ by Sajini Varadharajan; ‘At the Oldkins’ by Apoorva Vishwanath and ‘Destiny Stained’ by Shrada Agarwal. The books are available on Amazon, Flipkart, and all Sapna Book House stores in Bengaluru.

“The concept behind Stories by Children is to inspire creativity among children by encouraging the habits of writing and reading,” says Kalebar. 

Growth and milestones

In August 2021, Kalebar’s husband encouraged her to enter the Britannia Marie MyStartup Contest, which encourages homemakers to embark on their entrepreneurial journeys. 

“With little expectation, I applied,” she says, “so in mid-January, when I learnt I was among the 50 finalists, I was thrilled!”

Stories by Children came fifth in the competition and won an award of Rs 10 lakh.

In addition, Tanmayee and her husband made an initial investment of Rs 3.5 lakh in the platform. Among the primary sources of revenue are storytelling sessions in schools, sponsorships for contests, story writing workshops, and advertisements.

Apart from publishing stories and poems, Stories by Children also runs a club where children from various parts of the world meet online, once a month, to discuss books and literature.

Having built a dream venture from scratch much later in life, Kalebar says, staying focused on her vision and creating a network of supportive individuals has helped her in her journey.

“Women entrepreneurs should connect with others like them to understand their struggles and how they have overcome them,” she says. 

“We are now planning to host a Literature Festival dedicated to young authors. Our ultimate goal is to build a global community of young writers and establish ourselves as pioneers in children’s literature worldwide.”