Handmade Gifts are the Best Kind As Each Piece Will Be Unique. But Better Yet are Handcrafted Gifts That Come with a Social Purpose (2021)

Two villages adjacent to each other would not go to the other village even if it was just a few steps on the other side. Why? Because the lower caste would not sit with the normal caste people. So, initially, we had to face a lot of problems in empowering women. All of them needed help, they were being beaten up in the family, the dowry system, and female infanticide were very high. We could easily find out from people that a daughter went missing. You know all these horrifying stories led to demotivation in all these women. They would tell me what will happen even if I am learning something, how is it going to give me revenue.

Which was a fact, because there was no connection to the city, there was no connection to the outside world. To create a market, I once organized a very big event and I called some corporates to come into the village. It was quite a tough task but I persuaded them to come over and it was a big event for the village folks. It was very close to the main town of Gurgaon but that village did not have any proper road and the corporates told me where have you called us. Somehow they did come, but when they saw the products that the villagers had made they said this kind of things can be found by the roadside, it has no value. This is too ordinary and nobody will buy if you take it to a shop.

That was the day I realised that there was something big which we had to do. Then I hired experts to help us with product design and production and since then we have come a long way. We are now in fashion apparel, beautiful bags, and the furnishing range is huge. We make soft toys and travel bags, we have our own waste paper recycling unit that was set up in 2010. The paper we are churning out is not only used in our school but we also make a lot of handmade diaries, it’s very popular among the corporates.

It took me a lot of time and a lot of hard work in order to explain to the people the story behind it. Of course, for the finishing, I have had to really work hard with the women. I had to be very strict, I had to show them on the computer what is being made in the market and what is their product and what I was told, that your product is too ordinary. So, they attended plenty of workshops which we conducted, we called people from outside to tell them that you can do it. All those workshops were needed and now Indha, if I match it with Fab India, is doing much better as far as the work is concerned, the quality is concerned.

We have our children growing up to be software engineers and programmers. They are our in-house innovation which we have created which can be scaled up under Literacy India, and I plan it to be taken across the country because the basic education in our country sucks. This program which we have created, which is a 400 hours program, can help any illiterate and any NGO struggling the way I was struggling with it. So that is the vision for Literacy India and we continue doing our training and livelihood. I have segregated the women empowerment program into Indha which was earlier with Literacy India and to make it more robust and stronger, we need to have a better business. Then we can be self-sustained fully. That is the vision actually.

Europeans are a great inspiration for recycling and making new things. This is what we have also learnt, creating a different kind of cloth and as much eco-friendly and as much bio-degradable you can make a product. First, we make any kind of a product and then we decide if it is liked by the market or not. So, the initial 4-5 years went into a lot of research and trial, reverse engineering by buying a product and seeing as to how they are made, why it is such a quality, how the stitching is perfect, the kind of labels that should be there, how it should look, whether it will appeal to me or not.

So, on my international flights, I would go and see the shops and see the products for my own learning so that I can bring them back into the centres. And, we also keep exploring new experts and see whether women will be able to do it. Let’s say we are into travel products, travel bags and all. So, these travel bags are not easy to stitch in a normal machine, so we bought a new machine for instance. We needed to see whether a similar trade woman would be able to do justice to the product. So, the years of stitching actually made them quite an experienced craftsperson. So, those hits and trials with one machine led to more machines and then more machines and then more machines.

Like that we kept on going from that knowledge of baggage bags to clutch purses. The clutch purses what we used to make and the clutch purses that we are making now, there is a world of difference. So, I made sure that people picked up our product by saying oh wow this is a great product, not okay we should help them, not just that. I mean there is at the back of your mind that you can help them but you should also love the product which is more important to us. We have organised many Ecotourism festivals in the villages of our Artisans. This has led to the exposure for our village folks with the outside world and vice versa. We are selling the products on all the online platforms and we are still evolving and seeing what all products we can add.

In any company for gifting purposes, like a lot of travel companies, they want to gift something that is unique so they ask us what it is that you can offer and I am looking for something like this. So, we customize and it gives that kind of a handmade touch. So, our volumes are from the corporate world. So, all the gifting which is there in the companies, travel companies, event management companies, weddings, this is where the volume is and this is where they want quality finish and that is what we are matching to give it to them. From gifting, we try to make our ends meet. Design part we have designers come for an internship and we tell them the background, this is how you are supposed to work, this is what it is. I personally hired one more design person back from Purulia only because there are no opportunities.

Cotton is available in so many varieties and the colours bleed. Now, nobody wants to buy bleeding cotton, even if you buy stuff from Fab India that also bleeds. So, what do you do? We had to do a survey of the kind of people who are procuring directly from the mill. When we are doing our block printing, the colour should never bleed. Two-three times washing rinsing. So, it takes a lot of time but we made it into a habit and it gives a good quality product. Either we won’t give and if we give, it should be A-one.

And for Literacy India, our Gyantantra program is our digital innovation which I want to share with as many volunteers who want to reach out to the children who have not had a fair shot at life and their basic education is lacking. Share it with a non-profit and share it with the government schools. So, for Indha, we want to build our B2B work by networking with Young Startups who are working in the area of Eco Friendly and handmade. We want to be their producer.

For Literacy India, we want to help new budding nonprofits with their strategies with the tools which we have developed. We went through our set of challenges and the news organisations also face the same, helping them to cope with it is something we are looking at for the future. These are the targets that we have for Indha and Literacy India.