A daily newspaper, by its nature, is a perishable good. It becomes useless after 24 hours. By turning an old newspaper into a new text book, we had extended the life, utility and the value of the paper. It cost you nothing as a reader, and yet allowed a child to receive her first, perhaps only text book.

It made every HT reader, an active participant in the initiative and enabled them to take a small step towards addressing the literacy issue. We used our circulation-might into the largest distribution-network built in a single day.

YRTL, a ‘zero-incremental-cost’ initiative, achieved

- 1 million text books distributed in one day. (A number larger than combined efforts of the Ministry of Education in a year)

- Among our million advocates was the Hon. President of India, who lauded this initiative as one to ‘inspire other responsible citizens and organizations to undertake similar efforts and complement the work of the Government’.

- Created nationwide buzz on and offline

- 12% increase in unaided brand salience, 10% increase in the metric of ‘raises issues of public interest' and 6% increase in the ‘is the leading newspaper in Delhi’ metric