Discovering the Contemporary Tribal World
About Shyam Murmu
Shyam Murmu is an entrepreneur from the Santal community, based in Ghatsila, Jharkhand. With a background in Computer Science, Shyam has always been passionate about technology, tribal culture, history, and traditions.
In 2013, he co-founded www.santaledisom. com, a platform where he wrote articles about the Santal community and developed an online e-learning portal to teach the Santali language. He has designed several fonts for the Ol Chiki script and collaborated with the Netherlands-based type design foundry Typotheque in facilitating research on Ol Chiki.
Shyam has also worked extensively with the Kurukh Banna script. He designed and developed its font, conceptualised the first Android app that enabled typing Kurukh on smartphones, and contributed to the research documentation for the Unicode standardisation proposal of the script.
Alongside these initiatives, Shyam has been a Computer Faculty at Success Tutorial Classes in his hometown,Ghatsila, where he teaches and supports rural students in preparing for competitive examinations.
Currently, he is an active member of the Tribal Design Forum and is working on his startup, Galang.