MoU signed with Development Commissioner
The Ministry of Textiles has announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU), through the Development Commissioner for Handlooms, with Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd. to provide an online marketing platform to handloom weavers in order to boost the handloom sector, empower weavers and boost the overall weaving manufacturing in the country.
Under the MoU, Flipkart will provide weavers in India an 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.
Speaking on the occasion, the Textiles Minister, Mr. Santosh Kumar Gangwar, complimented the heads all the organizations attached to the Ministry, and said that they must work tirelessly for the upliftment of weavers and ensure the success of the venture. Further, periodic review of the sales and progress of weavers in the targeted clusters should be carried out.
The focus of this agreement should be to help weavers and weaver entrepreneurs to make products in tune with the buyer requirements and grow significantly, so that they may become manufacturers not only at local but also at the national level, he added.
Weavers will sell their products under their brand name and evolve as entrepreneurs selling products directly to buyers across the country.
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 encouraging 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 artisans in rural India to move ahead. North East has skilled weavers with rich traditional motifs and designs, but on account of 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 – Kaarigarkedwar bid to connect the weavers to buyers across the country will also help arrest this dying art and change the face of rural India. This initiative will further help rural weavers earn adequate remuneration for their products without having to step out of their homes. Thus the children of weavers will be motivated to learn and continue the art and stay back in rural areas instead of migrating to urban areas for jobs, thereby keeping alive the rich tradition of Indian art.
The Ministry of Textiles, 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. It has adopted a 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 has taken many initiatives from time to time such as organization 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, the need has been felt to provide online marketing platform to handloom weavers so that exquisite handloom products of remote village are made available to discerning buyers.
This kind of a co-ordinated 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.”