Good Indian Girl is an edgy, irreverent video-based how-to website that instructs second generation (immigrant) girls on how to preserve age old traditions and cultural nuances in a fresh and fun way. The founder is Sima Thakkar, who is based in San Francisco. You will find fabulous videos on Good Indian Girl such as how to wear a sari, how to make chai, and many others on all things Indian, in addition to a database of vendors. The site is beautifully designed and has a clean, simple interface. She plans to expand into other cultures (Japanese, Chinese, Latin, Jewish, etc.) I asked Sima several questions for this article.
Q&A with Sima Thakkar, founder of Good Indian Girl
What inspired you to launch Good Indian Girl?
I decided to launch my service when I was standing helplessly in hotel bathroom at an Indian wedding trying to figure out how to put on a sari and had nobody to help me. As a second generation Indian America who grew up in Southern Indiana, I had very little access to Indian culture. As I got older (and subsequently parents getting older, more family leaving India and emigrating to the US), I became further removed from my own culture. I wanted to provide a way to preserve certain cultural traditions but in a format that is more appealing and relevant to second generation audiences.
Where do you see your service within a year?
Good Indian Girl is a subsidiary of Good Girl, Inc which will expand across several other ethnic markets, for example, Good Chinese Girl, Good Japanese Girl, etc. We will be providing lots of rich content that will allow people to learn more about their culture, in addition to understanding other cultures, that will be useful for lifestyle choices, business travel and much more.
Are you self-funded?
Yes, for now.
* * * * *
Note: As a first-generation Filipina in the US (I came when I was 17), I was wondering whether someone would create a site called Good Filipino Girl, showing second and third generation Filipinas how to make sapin-sapin (delicious rice flour dessert) and dance the tinikling (an elegant but treacherous dance carried out between two bamboo poles that open and close and have a tendency to crush your ankles), but I see that Sima has already registered the URL, so hopefully she launches it soon.
28 May 2010 at 12:11
nice concept. simple and beautiful execution.
Good luck Sima.
24 June 2010 at 00:55
Preserving cultural traditions is fine and well. What about how to survive in American society? You know the things are well intentioned but clueless parents never taught us. Mostly about the ways of Western society like being assertive and well spoken. How about how to deal with white people? That’s kind of important, isn’t it? Wearing a sari is fine, but this generation could learn a great deal from some basic common sense about how different in fact the West is from whatever assumptions we got from home.