"A truck carrying potatoes overturns on Kundi Bridge (near Valsad);” "Spectacled cobra rescued from Dharampur’s Sidumbar village;” "A campaign to save the sparrow on Tithal Road in Valsad.” These are some of the recent news events reported by the Yazdaan Times (YT) started by Valsad based Deyazad Chothia in 2023. A news dissemination organization, YT has 14,000 followers on Instagram, 900+ subscribers on WhatsApp and 1,200 on their YouTube channel. Hard copies of the paper are printed and distributed only to government offices. "We target one to two posts daily,” he said.
Top: Yazdaan Times started by Deyazad Chothia (above)
There is no subscription fee. YT has no advertising as of now. "I want to stabilize the business first,” he told Parsiana. Chothia said he is happy to fund this enterprise for a further two years from his personal income and his other businesses, namely subcontracting for road building. "I want to do this for all people, especially Parsis,” he stated. While YT covers news mainly from Valsad and its environs, Chothia stated that "If I get a chance in future to cover Gujarat, then definitely we will work on it.”
The news is sourced from "press notes received from the government’s information department, police stations, the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation, through phone calls and informers,” explained Chothia. A team of two field staff covers stories. A script writer, an audio anchor for their YouTube channel and a graphic designer plus support staff sums up YT’s core.
YT is a sole proprietorship venture. Chothia stated that "Yazdaan is my son’s name and while filling up the form I applied for this name along with the other names… Luckily this name was okayed.” Wife Rashna supports Deyazad in his businesses while son Yazdaan is a sixth standard student. "We have been running our family egg trading business since almost 50 years which is being taken care of by my parents (Hector and Vira).”