About Dastaango 

Dastaango is a culturally rooted storytelling platform that helps South Asian families navigate life’s most difficult moments—like divorce, grief, or emotional absence—through personalized storybooks that feel like home.

In many South Asian households, conversations around mental health, separation, or emotional upheaval are silenced or softened under cultural expectations of “adjusting” and protecting children from discomfort. Most children’s media is Western-centric, offering few mirrors for South Asian names, family structures, or emotional realities. As a result, children often feel confused or unseen—and caregivers feel unprepared to offer the emotional support their children need.

Dastaango fills this gap with gentle, customizable storybooks that reflect the rich textures of South Asian life—joint families, familiar foods, everyday routines—told in English and regional languages. These stories offer emotional safety through age-appropriate metaphors and pacing, designed not to explain complex events, but to create space for feeling, reflection, and connection.

Rooted in research on bibliotherapy and child psychology, Dastaango's stories support children’s emotional well-being during transitional family experiences. Studies have shown that literature can significantly reduce anxiety and detachment in children of divorced families, particularly when stories allow them to see themselves—and their emotions—reflected with care.

What Makes Dastaango Unique

• Culturally rooted storytelling with South Asian names, foods, and family dynamics

• Language inclusivity with English + regional language options (with transliteration and audio)

• Emotionally safe design using metaphors to gently approach complex themes

• Parent guides with conversation prompts and expert advice for each story

• Personalization based on inputs like a child’s name, loved ones, family routines, or moods

• Flexible story moods—gentle, playful, or hopeful—depending on what your child needs

Technology with Heart

Dastaango is powered by Relic, a custom tech platform that personalizes stories through a compassionate prompt-based interface. Parents or caregivers answer a few reflective questions, and Dastaango’s story engine generates a tailored story with illustrations in a soft, hand-drawn style. The system is designed not to explain why someone is missing—but to hold space for children’s feelings around absence, change, and continued love.

Parents are gently guided to read the stories with their child, revisit them as needed, and hold the experience as a moment of co-regulation—not a lesson or explanation. Children don’t need perfect answers. They need stories that let them feel seen.

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Team - MCKENA, NANVI, NIDA, PRACHI, TENZING