Tata Sky, Javed Akhtar join hands to re-introduce bygone Indian literature

Direct-to-home service provider Tata Sky, a joint venture between the Tata Group and 21st Century Fox, on Tuesday launched a new service – Actve Javed Akhtar – in association with renowned poet and Bollywood lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar.

“The objective behind launching this service is to educate people on how relevant some of the most revered genres of poetry like dohas and shayaris are, in the modern day context,” Vikram Mehra, chief commercial officer of Tata Sky, told Business Standard.

Actve Javed Akhtar, which Tata Sky claims to be the country’s first-ever poetic literature-based interactive service, will have Javed describing the true essence of some of the most beautifully penned shayaris and dohas by Kabeer, Mirza Ghalib, Meer, Rahim, among others. “The idea is to re-introduce Indian literature in a contemporary fashion. New videos will be uploaded every day,” he said.

The on-demand conversational format with Akhtar will be followed by shayaris and dohas sung by contemporary artists like Tochi Raina, Roop Kumar Rathod, Shweta Pandit, Aaakriti Kakkar and Abhijit Pohankar. Tata Sky has partnered Insync, India’s first 24x7 classical-based music TV channel, to collaborate with composers and 50 singers (fresh talent and renowned artists) to create original songs for Actve Javed Akhtar.

Besides the video format, viewers can learn the meanings of various Urdu and Sanskrit words used in the dohas and shayaris using an on-demand application built on top of the interactive service, Mehra said, adding that subscription for this on-demand service was Rs 99 per month.

“We currently have over 13.5 million customers, and almost 29 per cent of them use one Actve service or the other. We are extremely bullish on Actve Javed Akhtar, too,” he said.