The Story Of Making Bangladesh's Most Successful Science Magazine

Science has always been one of the most popular fields of education in our country. Nearly one-third of the total students at the secondary stage prefer science over other steams of education. But it is really hard to imagine that, in a country of about 160 million people, there was no single scientific magazine even a few years ago! So to serve the whole necessary purpose of providing popularized science education, a monthly magazine call “Zero to Infinity” started its venture from April 2012. Today it is circulated over 25,000 copies in 53 districts of Bangladesh. Students from class six to university undergraduates are the readers of this magazine.

The Story

Once asked about how he got the idea at the first place Abdullah Al Mahmud, the Founder and Editor of Zero to Infinity replied with rather an obvious answer: most of us tend to solve a problem that we face ourselves and want to create something that we want most to have. In fact, this is what many great minds and makers before us have done. May be stories of making has a common cord to connect, may be our journey of making something happen is not that different at the end.

“When I was in class 9 or 10,” said Abdullah, “there was a popular science magazine named ‘Science World,’ but it was discontinued. It disappointed me a lot because there was no other magazine serving this area. So, once I started my undergrad at BUET, I and some of my friends decided to publish a magazine by ourselves! That’s how all of it started.”

Most of us tend to solve a problem that we face ourselves and want to create something that we want most to have. In fact, this is what many great minds and makers before us have done. May be stories of making has a common cord to connect, may be our journey of making something happen is not that different at the end.

The Struggle

But the journey was not pleasing for them. Abdullah and his team failed multiple times and quitted and started again with renewed sprit and lessons but never gave up.

“In October 2011, we published our first issue,” said Abdullah, “but the response we got was frustrating. Not even 100 copies were sold! So we stopped publishing. It was a huge blow. We stopped the project for a while. Then in February 2012, one of my books was published in collaboration with my honorable teacher Dr. Farseem Mannan Mohammedy, as always it was a fulfilling experience for me and it gave me new hope. That’s when I again thought about the magazine.

Finally in April 2012, Zero to Infinity started its journey with a price of BDT 40. This time again, we got a poor response! Only difference this time was we knew what to do since we went through the same path before. We understood that, BDT 40 is too much for students. So from the next month, we halved the price to BDT 20 and we received a welcoming response. Since then it is continued and we never had to look back.”

“In October 2011, we published our first issue,” said Abdullah, “but the response we got was frustrating. Not even 100 copies were sold! So we stopped publishing. It was a huge blow. We stopped the project for a while.

The Good Days

Future is as good as you make it. Today Zero to Infinity publishes magazines in sectors like mathematics and health and also launched Talk and web portal and won multiple awards.

After one year of survival, the mathematics section was extracted from Zero to Infinity, and a new magazine “Pi Zero to Infinity” was started publishing from April 2013. “It is one and only mathematics magazine in the history of Bangladesh and one of the fewest monthly mathematics magazine in the world also. About 10,000 copies of Pi Zero to Infinity are circulated all over the country now,” claimed Mahmud.

Most recently, the health section was also taken out from the magazine to publish a separate magazine on health. Mahmud said, “There are very few health magazines with not-so-good quality, although it is a huge sector. So we started publishing another separate magazine named “Health Zero to Infinity” from January 2015.”

Future is as good as you make it. Today Zero to Infinity publishes magazines in sectors like mathematics and health and also launched Talk and web portal and won multiple awards.

Web Portal, Q/A Archive and The BOBS Award

Zero to Infinity web portal is the largest science web portal in Bangla with 1600+ articles and a great number of readers with daily average 20,000+ hits. The Q/A archive section of the web portal won The BOBS Award under the “People’s Choice for Bengali” category, due to its excellent environment of science-related queries and answers. This platform has been quite popular.

Makers Behind The Curtain

The whole Zero to Infinity is a voluntary organization. The team consists of the students of BUET, KUET, SUST, Dhaka University and other prominent universities and colleges. There are teams for magazine editing, web portal editing panel, Q/A experts, Facebook group and page management admins, academic support team for science fair, workshops and Olympiads, Zero to Infinity Talks Team, Neurochallange Team, Campus Ambassadors, circulation team and so on. In total, there are about 300 volunteers working actively for science on behalf of Zero to Infinity. However, recently Zero to Infinity started to pay the writers.

The Future

Zero to Infinity aims to reach all the districts within this year. In 2015, they aim to publish the English version of the Zero to Infinity magazine and within 2017 they wish to turn zeroinf.com as the world class science portal.

Love is the killer app, wrote Tim Sanders years back. This holds truth. Once you are in love with something, in its true sense, you are in advantage. Obstacles will feel easy, hardships will feel natural and failure will feel like test for bringing your best out. The journey of making anything happen is tough one, failure is a natural outcome but if you are really passionate you will find a way out as Abdullah did.

Credits: Story by Kazi Shahriar Ruhullah for Future Startup, Edited by Ruhul Kader and Images by Zero to Infinity