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Background -
History is a result of various forces including geographical, social, religious etc. Each region in India evolved its own textile tradition and known for the production of distinct varieties of Hand-woven Fabrics. The sector employs 4.3 million weavers across the country only next to agri sector in India.
Challenge we are trying to address -
India has a heritage of handloom weaving which is largest in the world. But that is dying because of lack of awareness from the customer and competition from cheaper, rip-off versions of handloom that are sub-par in its quality. At policy level, conditions have also been unfavorable as these skilled laborers are encouraged to migrate and adopt unskilled jobs like construction and day wage jobs in bad working conditions.
Our Intervention -
There is a need for a private player to intervene and take these Indian Fabrics to the world markets. Today, the world is moving towards machine-free, green fabrics which is possible with the hand-woven Industry. The domestic market also has a huge consumer base for the product. While we work on one side with the communities, our effort is mainly on the demand side where we are trying various channels of market linkage innovatively to maximize the returns of every stakeholder in the valuechain.
Conclusion - After graduating from IIM Lucknow in 2016, I started Fabric Monde and an amazing team comprising Alumni of IIM Bangalore, Lucknow, Tata Institute of Social Sciences has been working to reach our goal to provide a business solution to the handloom problem of the country. In a period of 6 months, we have been encouraged by many organizations like Social alpha - a tata trust initiative, Deshpande Foundation, NSRCEL at IIMB. We won various business plan competitions and are now incubated at IIM Bangalore.
History is a result of various forces including geographical, social, religious etc. Each region in India evolved its own textile tradition and known for the production of distinct varieties of Hand-woven Fabrics. The sector employs 4.3 million weavers across the country only next to agri sector in India.
Challenge we are trying to address -
India has a heritage of handloom weaving which is largest in the world. But that is dying because of lack of awareness from the customer and competition from cheaper, rip-off versions of handloom that are sub-par in its quality. At policy level, conditions have also been unfavorable as these skilled laborers are encouraged to migrate and adopt unskilled jobs like construction and day wage jobs in bad working conditions.
Our Intervention -
There is a need for a private player to intervene and take these Indian Fabrics to the world markets. Today, the world is moving towards machine-free, green fabrics which is possible with the hand-woven Industry. The domestic market also has a huge consumer base for the product. While we work on one side with the communities, our effort is mainly on the demand side where we are trying various channels of market linkage innovatively to maximize the returns of every stakeholder in the valuechain.
Conclusion - After graduating from IIM Lucknow in 2016, I started Fabric Monde and an amazing team comprising Alumni of IIM Bangalore, Lucknow, Tata Institute of Social Sciences has been working to reach our goal to provide a business solution to the handloom problem of the country. In a period of 6 months, we have been encouraged by many organizations like Social alpha - a tata trust initiative, Deshpande Foundation, NSRCEL at IIMB. We won various business plan competitions and are now incubated at IIM Bangalore.
