This is a passion project of mine. I want to create an international media title about my native state of Kerala and the Malayali community across the world, published from Singapore.
I am a big fan of the Mekong Review and you might find (hopefully fairly decent) inspired similarities to it. In addition to Mekong Review, I am a big fan of The Morning Context and DealStreetAsia (also an early investor in both).
Why the name Malabar? It is inspired from the name of one of the earliest English newspapers published from Kerala, The Malabar Herald was published since 1905 but went out of business around the late 1990s (I am not sure about this, it is sad there is not even a wikipedia page about the paper and it’s founder, Ittoop Mampilli).
This is not my first attempt. I did try try with The Kochi Post from about 2012, a blog of mine which grew well but I got too ambitious and made it more complicated than needed. Anyway, this is me trying to take another swing at it.
What are the key differences this time? Mostly, I am going to attempt to do everything on my own in the development, production and funding aspects of this project. Not all the writing (thankfully!).
Having said that, if you find any errors or some suggestions on how the site can be better, please do drop me a note. I will surely writing to some of you on some stories or reviews which we would like to publish here. If you have some ideas for stories, feel free to drop me a line. Although this is self funded by yours truly, I will make sure every contributor is paid well and on time.
Finally a shout out to Alan Soon and Rishad Patel of Splice Media. I don’t know them but their School of Splice resources, really gave me the courage to attempt this again.
If you would like to be an early supporter, the first 1,000 of this Malabari tribe, please share your information here and I will get back to you.
On twitter, I am @23jacob, DM’s are open.