Navreet Sivia, 33, a resident of village Sivian in Bathinda district of Punjab’s Malwa region, quit his secure job at a Jalandhar-based TV channel in May 2020 to take the most daring decision of his life. A postgraduate in Journalism and Mass Communication from Punjabi University, Patiala, Sivia started dividing his time between farming and journalism. Restless to set up his own digital media platform, he availed a loan of Rs 8 lakh and went ahead with his friend Karan Sharma, 28, to start a digital news platform, Akhar (Punjabi for alphabet, like akshar in Hindi)— that at present has 7.12 lakh subscribers on YouTube and 6.5 lakh followers on Facebook.