Ministry of Textiles recently announced that Ministry through DC (Handlooms) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Flipkart India Pvt Ltd to provide online marketing platform to handloom weavers to boost the handloom sector, empower the weavers and boost manufacturing in the country.
Through this exclusive agreement, Flipkart will provide weavers in India online marketing platform, infrastructural support in data analytics and customer acquisition to help them get remunerative prices for their products and scale up their business.
Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, through the office of the Development Commissioner for Handlooms, is continuously striving to develop a strong, competitive and vibrant handloom sector to provide sustainable employment to handloom weavers. The Ministry had adopted focused, flexible and holistic approach to promote and facilitate the continuous overall growth and development of the handloom industry through formulating, implementing, monitoring and reviewing of handloom policies, programmes and schemes; to support the handloom sector at large in upgrading skill knowledge, market infrastructure, living condition etc.
For marketing support, the Ministry of Textiles has taken many initiatives from time to time such as organizations of domestic marketing events, participation in international fairs and buyer-seller meets etc. However, in the present scenario of online marketing and net savvy consumers, it has been felt need to provide online marketing platform to handloom weavers so that exquisite handloom products of remote village is made available to discerning buyers.
With this objective, Ministry of Textiles, through Development Commissioner for handlooms signed MOU with Flipkart, a leading online market service provider.
This kind of a coordinated effort has been planned and executed for the first time with Flipkart for handloom weavers which will bridge the missing linkages of market intelligence, market access and logistics and help the Indian weavers in getting remunerative prices for their products. Flipkart will provide online marketplace for sale of the products of the weavers / master craftsmen/ national awardees/ state level awardees and the others as advised by Development Commissioner for Handlooms. Towards this end, they will go to the doorsteps of the above said since they do not have the brand, financial wherewithal to have a store leave aside in a town but not even in their village, no wherewithal to travel to market their products. Flipkart or their business partners will also have a collection centers to collect their products.
The weavers will sell their products under their brand name and evolve as an entrepreneur selling his products directly to buyers across the country without stepping out of their workplace.
Flipkart, with its access to the largest customer base in the country, aims to help weavers make optimal use of the available data to guide entrepreneurs and artisans on areas such as deciding on the right selling price, payment automation, proper packaging, transportation, brand building etc.
The Data analytics and market intelligence provided by Flipkart will help the weavers focus only on producing better saleable product ranges. This in turn will help them plan their production and inventory and expand their business, thus revolutionizing manufacturing in rural India and encourage entrepreneurship.
This partnership will connect the artisans directly to the buyer and the hand holding by Flipkart in guiding, packaging, collecting and delivering to the buyer will motivate the artisans in rural India. North East has skilled weavers with rich traditional motifs and designs, but due to the lack of market linkages they are not able to exploit the market potential. Similarly, Paithani and Himroo weaves from Maharashtra have tremendous value but are a dying art. Flipkart’s ABHIYAAN Flipkart – Kaarigar ke dwar to connect the weavers to the buyers across the country will also help arrest this dying art and change the face of rural India. This initiative will help rural weavers earn suitable remuneration for their products without having to step out of their homes. Thus the children of these weavers will be motivated to learn and continue the art and stay back in the rural areas instead of migrating to the urban areas for jobs, thereby keeping alive the rich tradition of Indian art.
In this unique and promising initiative by the Ministry of Textiles, Development Commissioner (Handlooms) and Flipkart have joined hands to provide marketing support to handloom weavers of rural areas. The MOU was signed in the presence of the Hon’ble Minister of Textiles, Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Secretary (Textiles), Govt. of India, S. K Panda, Development Commissioner (Handlooms), Dinesh Kumar, Sh. Joy Bandekar, President Corporate Affairs, Ankit Nagori, V.P., Marketplace, Flipkart and other officials of Ministry of Textiles. The MOU was signed by Dinesh Kumar, Development Commissioner (Handlooms) & Ankit Nagori, V.P., Marketplace, Flipkart.
