Hey Kahani is a screen-free audio storytelling platform for South Asian diaspora children ages three to six. Hemish Dave (CBS ‘20), a fourth-generation Kenyan-Indian, grew up listening to the BBC World Service with his grandfather in Nairobi and later picking his own stories on cassette, with no screen or algorithm deciding what came next. When he and his wife, now raising their kids in Brooklyn, went looking for stories that reflected their culture, they mostly found a flattened version of it. With Hey Kahani, a child taps a physical story card to the Kahani Player and an original story begins. Each one is built from interviews with diaspora parents and grandparents in four countries and captures details like festival-morning video calls with grandparents. Dave wants it to be the platform every South Asian diaspora family turns to, and the team will use its funds to make more stories and grow beyond Brooklyn into the wider New York area, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Hey Kahani2026-2027
