Handloom department ties up with 9 e-commerce players to increase sales

Chennai: The Handloom Commissioner under the Union Ministry of Textile has tied up with leading nine e-commerce players, including Flipkart, Amazon, e-Bay and others to increase its reach in the domestic market. Some of the e-commerce players like e-Bay have been allocated 10 clusters, or areas. The Ministry also tied up with 70 retailers to sell handloom products, which were largely available only in trade fairs or in few government run stores currently.

Alok Kumar, union development commissioner (Handlooms) said the domestic market has huge potential but faces a problem in branding and reach.

Earlier Khadi and Village Industry Corporation had seen some success in a tie-up with Fab India and some e-commerce players had found success.

Handloom has traditionally focused on sarees and ethnic wear, but the Ministry is now looking at new Indo-Western styles, and casual and office wear to attract a younger generation.

 “We foresee very high level of sales with the E commerce partners next 5 years. It is expected that the sales through the E Commerce will rise manifold,” Kumar told Business Standard. The portals have approached the weavers and have achieved a high coverage, he said, claiming that while one portal has registered 24 cooperative societies covering 23,000-odd weavers, another has covered 542 weavers and societies and has uploaded 9,360 products.

The idea of bringing e-commerce partners was to bring in weavers to join in the initiative of Indian Handloom Brand (IHB), which was launched in August 2015 by the Prime Minister of India at Chennai to promote sales of genuine quality handloom products.

The purpose of the project is to make the products easily available to a wider spectrum of buyers at a pan-India level as well as globally. It will also generate better prices and continuous business, besides facilitating direct access to markets and consumers for weavers.

The weaver/ manufacturer has to get approval and registrations as per the norms specified for IHB registration. They will then be linked with e-commerce partners for uploading specified products for sales. The e-commerce partners are creating separate home page on their home pages for such products

The partners are also supposed to transfer up to 92% of sale value to the weaver’s accounts within a short period of the transaction going through. 

E- Commerce Entity    States Covered
Flipkart Pvt.Ltd    Varanasi Cluster (UP)
Weave Smart Online Service    Andhra Pradesh, Telgana and Tamil Nadu
eBay India Pvt. Ltd    UP (Varanasi, Barabanki, Bijnor), MP (Maheswar), WB(Samudragarh), Manipur(Imphal), Assam(Sualkuchi), TN(Palani), Telangana (Pochampally), MH (Yeola), Himachal Pradesh (Kullu), Rajasthan (Kota), Kerala (Kannur). Focus cluster Parmakudi (Tamilnadu), Bodoland (North East), Champa (Chattisgarh) and Nuapatna (Orissa).
Pegarse Technology Pvt. Ltd    UP, Tamil Nadu, Kerala
Crafts villa Handicrafts Pvt. Ltd    Maharastra, MP, Orissa
GoCoop Solution & Services Pvt. Ltd    WB
Gaatha Handicraft P Ltd,1    WB, AP, Karantaka
Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.