India Handloom Board looks at e-commerce for more visibility

In a bid to raise the market potential of handloom, the Indian Handloom Board is drawing up new strategies that include retail and e-commerce. The Ministry of Ttextiles is focusing on making handloom more visible, especially on e-commerce sites. Already, the office of development commissioner of handlooms has engaged sites like Flipkart, eBay, Amazon, Craftsvilla and Gaatha to market its products.

The board will not only focus on branding but also include skill upgradation of weavers, loom upgradation, making good quality raw material available for cheaper rates, availability of adequate credit facilities and product design, informed Alok Kumar, development commissioner, handloom.

Central Cottage Industries Corporation of India has four stores at Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai that stock India Handloom Board’s products. The organisation will be partnering with APCO of Andhra Pradesh, the handloom stores of Telangana, Jammu & Kashmir, and fashion retailer BIBA.

Indian Handloom Board was set up in 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is aimed at endorsing quality of handloom in terms of raw material, processing, embellishment, weaving, design and other parameters besides social and environmental compliance. Registration under the brand is possible only after going through stringent testing of samples at a governmental laboratory. So far, 170 registrations have been granted to producing agencies and weavers in 41 categories. The India Handloom producers have clocked sales to the tune of Rs 15 crore in the last four months.