Across the world, newsrooms have been scrambling to keep up with a rapidly evolving pandemic that has claimed thousands of lives. As cities and countries go into lockdown, tested business models are being discarded for new ones as the world struggles to adapt and adjust to the ‘new normal’.
Even here, at Roar, we’ve been working to adapt to new challenges while ensuring the content we provide is impactful and of high quality. But as we work, completely immersed in the battle against misinformation and disinformation, we received word of some very good news.
‘Forbes’ magazine had just published its prestigious ‘30 Under 30’ Asia List for 2020, and among the four Sri Lankans included was our very own Founder/CEO Mustafa Kassim.
Kassim’s dream for Roar began while he was studying for his degree in Economics at the California State University, Northridge. Looking for content from back home, he found that political news and gossip dominated the media space, and there was no one telling original and credible stories.
Returning in 2014, he decided to test the waters with a small team of freelance writers. The work his team produced was met with a great reception, and Kassim continued to experiment with content types and formats—something not done in the digital media space in Sri Lanka before. These included pioneering user-friendly live blogs, short-form documentaries, thematic collections and more, redefining what it means to be a digital media platform.
Emboldened by a growing community of loyal consumers, Kassim also established in quick succession teams in the vernacular Sinhala and Tamil languages as well as ventured outside the island, establishing a team in Bangladesh.
Six years on, Roar Global has evolved into a most formidable South Asian digital media company, with thriving creative teams working to produce country-specific content in four languages in two countries.
Roar has won awards, rewards and grants, but most of all it has won the trust of the public as a credible source of information—which to us is the most valuable accolade of all.
