Indian govt ropes in Flipkart to support handloom weavers

25 Aug '14

3 min read

The Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd. to support handloom weavers by providing an online marketing platform to them, aimed at empowering the weavers and thereby giving a boost to handloom manufacturing in the country.

As per the agreement, signed by the Ministry through the Development Commissioner for Handlooms, besides providing online marketing platform for weavers in India, Flipkart will also provide infrastructural support in data analytics and customer acquisition to help weavers get remunerative prices for their products and scale up their business.

Although the office of the DC (Handlooms) has taken several initiatives from time to time to support handloom weavers, in view of the growing trend of online marketing and net savvy customers, a need was felt to provide online marketing platform to handloom weavers so that their exquisite products can be offered to discerning buyers.

The MoU with Flipkart 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, Flipkart or their business partners will go to the doorsteps of the above said, and would also have collection centers to collect their products.

Moreover, Flipkart will make optimal use of the available data and guide weavers, artisans and entrepreneurs 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, the Ministry of Textiles said in a statement.

“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,” the statement said.

Speaking at the MoU signing ceremony, Textiles Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar suggested that periodic review of the sales and progress of the weavers in the targeted clusters should be carried out. He emphasized that the focus of the Ministry’s association with Flipkart should be to help weavers and weaver entrepreneurs to produce products in tune with the buyer requirements and grow significantly so that they may become manufacturers, not only at a local but also at a national level.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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