Product notes

Keeping a log of our journey (aka product notes) on building this much needed community of belonging for you and us.

August 2025: Two months of building DoorDesi and listening to you

When we started DoorDesi, we set ourselves a modest goal: reach 100 newsletter subscribers by India's Independence Day (August 15). Yes we did, hit 105 just a few days after. We got there without aggressive marketing, paid ads, or growth hacks. Just authentic connection and word-of-mouth from readers who felt seen. That is the real win 🔥.

We decided to bake audience listening into the DoorDesi DNA from the beginning. So in just our second month, we did something vulnerable: we asked our early readers point-blank what DoorDesi means to them and how we could serve them better. No surveys. Just a simple DM message.

Their feedback was both humbling and clarifying. Yes, they love our witty take on India news and our clutter-free curation. But more importantly, they told us what DoorDesi is here to do.

So here is our mission and vision statement shaped by our audience, in their own words.

DoorDesi is “a trusted lens when India headlines feel overwhelming, acting as a cultural connector that reminds people they're not alone, and slowly becoming a space where the immigrant experience gets shared and celebrated”.

What we actually did:

➡️ Continue to share The DoorDesi Census as our main call-to-action. First and foremost we are interested in mapping how far and wide the India diaspora is.

➡️ Keeping up with regular posting on social channels (it is harder than we expected).

➡️ Treating every new follower as a potential community member, not a number. That looks like writing personal DMs, seeking individual feedback, featuring people's stories in our postcards, and yes, even following their personal Instagram profiles to get a peek into their lives. Because understanding their daily experiences the small wins, the cultural navigation, the moments of homesickness will help us serve them better.

➡️ We also launched our biggest change yet: Postcards from DoorDesis. Every week, we feature a community member sharing a glimpse of their life wherever they are in the world. Each postcard reminds us how beautifully diverse the diaspora experience is, yet how universal the feelings are.

🚀 What we're celebrating, nevertheless:
✅ The long texts and even voice notes with feedback, suggestions and love

✅ Our first community postcard all the way from Alaska

✅ Choosing depth of connection over scale. This means we're not obsessing over big follower numbers or viral content. We're asking: how can we strengthen our relationship with each person who finds us? (DM any tips or ideas).

💥 Next steps:

💪 Our next challenge is evolving from a two-way relationship (readers ↔ us) to a multi-way relationship where community members can connect with each other. We're exploring ways to make this happen, DM us or hit reply if you have ideas.

💪 We're also learning to embrace the slowness. Building authentic community takes time, and we'd rather have 100 people who genuinely feel connected to what we're creating than 10,000 who scroll past without engaging.

Building community-first in a metrics-driven world feels rebellious. But two months in, we're convinced it's the only way to create something that actually matters to the people it serves. Every week, we get messages from readers saying DoorDesi made them feel less alone. That's the real metric we're optimizing for; not opens or clicks, but that feeling of "finally, someone gets it."

July 2025: 🔥 It has been 1 month since we started and we just had to reflect

What we dreamed of: Big bang announcement, clearly communicating our what it is and for who, instant sign ups (because we know so many Indians living abroad).

What actually happened: Starting it is easy. Getting their buy-in is hard. Our announcement DM received a lot of encouraging replies; but we are just under a 100 subscribers
➡️ Whether we like it or not, using social media platforms for discovery and reach. Instagram reels is not our strong suite but it got us attention beyond our personal contacts.
➡️ Attention ≠ Action (read that again)
➡️ Consistency beats perfection, but consistency is HARD when you're building this as a side project.

🚀 What we're celebrating, nevertheless:
✅ 6 editions, every Sunday, without fail

✅ Stories that do not rely on the outrage cycle

✅ Receiving a story lead from a member

✅ A member endorsing DoorDesi on their social media (thank you Srinivas)

✅ Looking forward to weekends to write this near personal update for friends who are in the same boat as us (it doesn't feel like work)

✅ Finding the sweet spot between AI efficiency and human curation

✅ Learning that audience development is relationship building, not just content distribution. And building relationships takes time, is hard work and demands showing up consistently. But that's what we are here to build.

💥 Next steps:
💪 Keep up the consistency even on hard days
💪 Refine the offering and add new sections
💪 Test new ways to converse with our audience
💪 Make those cringey reels because that's where our audience really is (will report back on what that does for us)