Age is just a number. You must have heard this saying many times, but do you know what it actually means? Well, some people achieve success at an earlier stage, while some taste success at a later part of their lives. For the people in the former category, age is just a number and it cannot hold them longer from becoming what they aspire to be. Shaunak Chakraborty is one such person for whom age doesn’t have any boundaries or limitations. Let us have a closer look at his successful career and how he transformed him into becoming the CEO of the Indian version of Wikipedia, Gyaanipedia:
Shaunak Chakraborty is the founder and CEO of Gyaanipedia, a Made in India Free Encyclopedia, a poet, author, and social worker. He has extensive knowledge and experience in the writing and marketing industry. From the days of his childhood, he wanted to help poor and needy people. However, he also wanted to do something on his own that can yield him some respect in society. The story behind the starting of Gyaanipedia is quite interesting.
One day, while watching an Indian singing reality show ‘The Voice Kids’ back in 2016, Shaunak got impressed by the performances and decided to write Wikipedia pages for them. After publishing the articles on Wikipedia, he soon realized that his articles were removed from the platform due to strict policies. At that moment itself, he decided that he will launch an Indian version of Wikipedia so that people can freely write and publish valuable articles online and share their knowledge with others.
On 2nd July 2017, Shaunak launched a website named ‘Worlipedia,’ hoping to make it a valuable and trustable information website. However, it turned out to be a failure; thus, he had to close the website in 2018. Although his first venture failed, Shaunak took this as a part of the learning stage. He decided to research the ins and outs of how a website works. Shaunak discussed this issue with his Information Practices (IP) teacher Mrs. Neha Shekhawat after which he came to know about the open-source software.
After days and weeks of research, Shaunak finally decided to create and launch the Make in India Free Encyclopedia- Gyaanipedia in 2018. As you may guess, it is derived from the combination of two words, ‘Gyaani’ means intelligent or knowledgeable in Hindi and encyclopedia. In just a few months of its launch, Shaunak noticed a sudden jump in the website’s daily impressions and visits. The website gained much attention from all parts of India and the world as people started posting articles in various languages.
Currently, Gyaanipedia has over 9M views and more than 100,000 informative articles in the database. The website has earned a good reputation in Google as the search engine now uses the information on Gyaanipedia to develop knowledge panels. Recently in November 2020, Gyaanipedia launched its first mobile application on Google Play Store. Today, Shaunak Chakraborty stands as an inspiration to millions of youngsters who want to do something big and achieve excellence in their lives.
It’s his birthday today. So, with this article, we wish him all the very best for his future plans and projects and wish for him healthy and happy life.
