Weavers, traders connect online

A small entrepreneur of Andhra Pradesh, D G Ladha, has taken an initiative to bring weavers at the grassroots level and traders on a single platform to put a check on weavers getting exploited by middlemen.

Ladha is trying to evolve a mechanism by which weavers can get feedback from buyers to customise their products and get higher prices.

Ladha has registered about 9,000 weavers in the country on his portal www.handlooms.com since it was launched in August 2007. He said that there was no registration fee for the weavers.

International buyers were charged Rs 10,000 a month for the registration and domestic traders Rs 800-1,500 a month. Detailed addresses and product profiles of weavers have been given on the site so that the buyers could contact them without intermediaries.

"The middlemen walk away with fat profits due to the ignorance of weavers. So after an extensive research of five years, I realised that web-based connectivity would be the most convenient and affordable way to provide the weavers their fair share".

Ladha has textile printing factories named 'Prakriti', one each at Secundrabad and Kolkata, and has been into this business for over two decades.

"I have been doing pigment and acid painting on handloom textiles and this was how I got the idea of doing something for the handloom industry that has been marginalised in the last few years". Ladha has decided to foray into vegetable colour dying that is in great demand in the developed world.

He added that most of the weavers making silk sarees in Benaras are in the red due to a dwindling demand of sarees.

"If we could give them feedback, their technique and fabric can be used to manufacture cloth for different kinds of garments. If we can provide an assured market to weavers, then only would they adopt innovative designs," he said.

He also said that with so many retail chains coming up in India, there is a big market for the handloom industry.

Ladha is currently trying to arrange a tie-up between a few retail chain and weavers to market customised embroidered garments made exclusively for their brands.