Online marketplace Craftsvilla.com has tied up with Weavesmart, a company which sells Indian handlooms online, to help India’s village artisans to display their creativity on a larger scale. Based in Mumbai, Craftsvilla went for the tie-up with an eye on a share in the Rs. 24,000-crore handloom market. Craftsvilla.com exhibits handmade, ethnic and natural Indian products on its website. Craftsvilla is a certified partner with the Textiles Ministry for e-marketing of handloom products. In collaboration with Weavesmart, it plans to assist small weavers to sell their handloom products online. “We believe in sustainable solutions. India’s textile ministry estimates that handloom weaving provides employment to more than 4.3 million weavers and allied workers, and India accounts for 95 percent of the world’s handwoven fabrics. This is a big opportunity and one that has the potential to do well. It’s a 24,000-crore market and we are here to offer a marketplace to these rich handloom weaves of India,” said Monica Gupta, Co-Founder, Craftsvilla.com. “We are excited to partner with Craftsvilla.com as we share common business objectives like helping rural artisans and an audience base with ethnic taste, and it will surely give us a larger reach. We will actually complement each other — Craftsvilla in marketing and Weavesmart in sourcing from rural areas and various handloom clusters. Consumers and weavers will benefit immensely from this tie-up,” said Nishita Manne, COO at Weavesmart.
