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Table of Contents
Introduction
Blue Pottery Supply-side Players Anchor-led Communities
Scaling Grassroot Operations
It takes a Village to Raise an Art Value Product in a Volume Game Full-Stack Supplier Brands Hybrid Production - Global Delivery
India's Global Ready Artisanal D2C Terracotta The Handicraft Supply Chain The Whitespace The Opportunity: Value Creation 4 of 4000
The Bridge Bharat Dream Blue Pottery Terracotta Phad Chitra
Bridge AjrakhBharat
Where it all began Crisis births innovation. The past two years of COVID-19 have proved this wholly true. When 'digital' became essential for everyone overnight, India's massive tally of small and medium businesses was forced to think differently in order to survive. Over the past two years, this DNA has now nudged Bharat to dream bigger; to build bigger. The pandemic has triggered a massive surge in indigenous businesses looking to expand internationally. This has revealed a glaring need for diversification of global supply chains to embrace the aspirations of these businesses. This time, we decided to deeply understand a few of Rajasthan's most popular handicrafts. For a sector that is the second-largest employment generator in the country after agriculture, it is one less explored through the lens of digital intervention. And we are stubborn to understand why. So, we traveled to Jaipur and its adjoining districts to uncover this opaque infrastructure and its players. We sought to build detailed personas of the stakeholders in the chain, map both their digital and offline behaviors and identify whitespaces where interventions could be plugged. We are on a mission to uncover this gem of a nation and humbly invite you to be a part of our journey. Team Bridge Bharat
Supply-side Players
ANCHOR-LED COMMUNITIES Kalyan Joshi, National Awardee, Phad Chitra | Founder Chitrashala | Bhilwara
Tucked away in Eastern Rajasthan is the quaint, run-of-the-mill town of Bhilwara: an economy that is sustained on the export of synthetic fibers. Unknown to many, the town also hosts one of the most fascinating Khadi arts of the country: The art of Phad Chitra. Pioneered by the Joshi family over 700 years ago, the artform's secrets are to date, constrained to a single-family. Over the years, Kalyan Ji has built a formidable name for himself in the art world. Highly respected by his peers and the community, he has added new dimensions to the Phad art, experimenting with contemporary styles and line drawings. He won the National Award in 2006 and 2010. The son of Padma Shree Lal Joshi, he has taken it upon himself to revive the art. In 1960, he founded Chitrashala, a school of Phadd art where he teaches and develops new artists, giving the art another life. To date, he has taught over 700 artists, locally and during the COVID years, via Zoom. This model indeed works beautifully. In a
community that is as tightly-knit as this one, it is only a trusted community member or 'Saathan' (Marwari for 'Respected Brother') who can drive change. Kalyan Ji works with bulk commercial orders or commissioned works by driving a network of 200 artists under his wing. The process itself is absolutely flawless. Usually, a merchandizing house would brief Kalyan Ji on a concept project. They then ideate the ingredients of the theme: a highly collaborative exercise. Execution is taken care of by Kalyan Ji, who works closely with his network of artists. Interestingly, an individual artist carries out one portion of the project versus an end-toend piece to ensure uniformity in design. In such fragmented industries, operational intricacies are well-executed at grassroots levels. 4000 such artforms that involve 7M kaarigars work in a similar fashion: A trusted, community leader spearheads operations with a strong 100-200 artist network.
4K ARTFORMS
40K ANCHORS
The Chitrashala Studio, Bhilwara
IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE AN ART Kailash Shekhawat | Owner, Ghoomar Blue Pottery
Amidst the scorching heat of Rajasthan's arid lands lies the compact, vibrant hub of Rajasthan's blue pottery art- Boraj. The manufacturing hub of the cottage industry is limited to the homes of the artists, where often the entire family is engaged in the same art form. The stages of blue pottery include molding of the clay, painting, heating, glazing, and finishing, along with a quality check for manufacturing defects. Each step is carried out by a group of people in the family: quite a steady assembly line. Kailash Ji is the owner of Ghoomar Handicrafts, a small supplier that further sells to larger middlemen and/or makes over-the-counter sales at local art fairs. They are previously freelance artists for Neerja International (story ahead) but have ceased to work with them since Neerja now has an in-house kaarigar team: given high operational friction.
Kailash Ji is a primary digital user, with his activity limited to WhatsApp, UPI, and Google (for design inspiration).
"The entire village here has been working with blue pottery for generations. We 80-100 artist families can create about a 1000 pieces a day!" 7m such kaarigars in India contribute to a whopping $3.3B handicraft export industry. Highly fragmented, isolated designers, and low trickle-down effects all point in the right direction for intervention, but the need for a single aggregator layer here becomes more and more glaring, given the high operational opaqueness: tracking progress, quality checks, packaging, branding, accountability for turn around time, general management, etc.
7M KAARIGARS
0.7M VILLAGES
Ghoomar Handicrafts HQ, Boraj
VALUE PRODUCT IN A VOLUME GAME Ruhana, Ajrakh Artist | Jaisalmer Community Managed Organization
Even the most fragmented industries in India have an ornate order to their operations. One such incredible example is the set of Community Managed Organizations for handicrafts and handlooms spread across the country. These physical spaces, around 25003000 square feet in size serve the purpose of first-level warehouses/ storage facilities for a particular village engaged in one or two artforms. CMOs are usually managed by someone from the same community, who overlooks aggregation, quality checks, logistics, packaging, payments, supplier connects, and day-to-day functioning of the space: serving a function similar to a store manager. The space usually houses 15-20 kaarigars at a time, the remainder of whom work at the neighboring village. One brand that has effectively managed to work with these CMOs is FabIndia. Founded in 1960, FabIndia began working as a furniture export house and has, since developed into a market leader in handicraft
manufacturing and design innovation. The company today, works with 15 such organizations, offering design, QCs, packaging, logistics, and positioning globally. Most of the kaarigars here have primary digital orientation, many of whom still use feature phones. The 'store manager' on the other hand, is usually responsible for building and maintaining supplier connects, mainly through word-of-mouth or via India Mart listings. (Most of these, however, are inactive, and old offline connects work best). Additionally, these managers build a presence for their organizations through yearly art exhibitions, melas, or government-organized fairs. These organizations, a good 2-2.5 lakh in number are first-level aggregators of the complex handicraft supply chain. However, the fragmentation of the industry means that not every artform is covered under CMOs, although its penetration is fairly deep.
0.2M COMMUNITY
SPACES
A community managed organization, Jaiselmer
FULL-STACK SUPPLIER BRANDS Mrs. Leela Bordia, Founder | Neerja International | Jaipur
One of Blue Pottery's largest manufacturers and exporters: Neerja International is the flagbearer of the strength and creative abilities of our artist economy. What started off as a passion project in 1978 is today an acclaimed export house that stands firmly by its artists and the community. The market leader works with over 200 blue pottery kaarigars and has managed to bring together design and utility in the artform; their strongest selling point today. However, the scope for stronger fusion design is large and the team knows this. Mrs. Leela has been working with these artists for over 40 years now and understands the nitty-gritty of manufacturing, aesthetics, and demand patterns. However there always comes certain inconsistencies with the work of the hand; two products in a single order, if handcrafted, are subject to minute differences in patterns and colors.
These are pointers that small boutique buyers understand and accept, but larger global buyers tend to discard them as rejections. Leela Ji is thus, strongly against working with large overseas buyers. 1.2M handicraft suppliers in India, although have massive scale and strong quality checks in place, require design houses to contemporize artforms to match global palettes, technology to procure effectively, and product positioning to help sell better.
1.2M SUPPLIERS
<5% FULL-STACK
Neerja International HQ, Jaipur
HYBRID PRODUCTION, GLOBAL DELIVERY Sarad Bararia | Managing Director, Natural Interio Stonesworld | Mumbai/Jaipur
"I started the business of exporting stonework over 15 years ago. All I have focused on since then is delivering quality products and building a brand for myself in the market." Sarad Bararia works exclusively with large clients globally to fulfill commissioned projects that particularly involve stonework from Jaipur. As he built Natual Interio as a global brand over the past 15 years, he chooses to employ in-house kaarigars and product designers to ensure that quality checks are maintained and monitored by him personally. This also allows him complete freedom and visibility in developing new designs and catering to niche orders. Sarad is in the business of exporting high-quality, high-value Indian heritage globally. For handicrafts that are of high unit value and operate on low volumes, such as gemstones, artwork, or stonework, it is more lucrative for export houses to have complete control of the supply chain to reduce rejection costs (very high on a unit level).
However, with high volume, lower value handicrafts the same model becomes cumbersome. A contrast to be built here is Dilip Private International, manufacturers of the terracotta home décor brand, Ellementry. Ellementry has an in-house design team with exclusive designs for different geographies. Each and every design is executed by a band of manufacturers: DPI being one of them. Unlike Sarad, DPI is revenue-conscious v/s brand conscious and works on high volume exclusive bulk orders. QC is set up by the Ellementry team with an average rejection rate of 5%. 67,000 such export houses work on models similar to DPI, who are the last leg of the domestic supply chain. Unlike Sarad, these export houses use listing apps like India Mart for visibility: their only use of digital. Multi-crore businesses like these are built and sustained offline to this day. Brand-conscious export houses are primary digital users, but a bulk of business development is done via WOM. Critical business functions like cataloging, tracking and TAT management is done offline leaving little scope for trusted custom orders.
67K EXPORTERS
$3.4B REVENUE
Various Export House workspaces, Rajasthan
INDIA'S GLOBAL READY ARTISANAL D2C
Consumption is becoming niche. Niches are becoming larger. Passionate entrepreneurs working with artist communities can vouch for this statement. Take the case of Mora Taara, a boutique store that works with blue pottery designs in Jaipur. The team works with over 20 artists from the community, along with an in-house design team to create unique product lines that cater to a wide spectrum of consumers. Another example is P-TAL: a D2C brand that works exclusively with Punjab's Thathera community: skilled craftsmen who specialize in the traditional technique of hammering brass and copper sheets into utensils. The venture was founded at Shri Ram College of Commerce's entrepreneurship cell, Enactus. Mora Taara and P-TAL are your quintessential contemporary brands: conscious of positioning, design differentiation, shopping experiences; they are willing to work on customized orders and
bulk orders of 1000-2000 pieces. These are brands that are aspirational, creative and boutique. 2500 such artisanal D2C brands based out of India have a similar story. Deeply versed with the artist communities that they work with, founders are better able to manage operations and positioning for smaller clusters. The one thing that most of these brands lack is global distribution. For most, this is a market that is opaque and intimidating, sometimes not worth the cost-benefit.
2.5K+
D2C BRANDS
Aman Khanna, Claymen Cloth and Canvas Story; Jaypore
THE HANDICRAFT SUPPLY CHAIN
Export House
Supplier
Community-managed organization
67K
80%
$3.4B
handicraft export houses
revenue-conscious exporters v/s brand conscious exporters
Indian handicraft exports in 2021
1.2M
2.5K+
3-5%
handicraft suppliers
Homegrown D2C artisanal brands v/s supply aggregators
global footprint of D2C artisanal brands
0.2M
20%
CMOs
supply penetration
7M
4000
2%
kaarigars, 2nd largest employment generator after agriculture
indigenous Indian artforms
digital penetration
Kaarigar
THE WHITESPACE
DE LIV ER Y
A full-stack sourcing platform of Indian local products
30mn*
cross-border boutique businesses
ION T A IZ T I G DI
DISCOVERY
Authenticity mapping Positioning
Packaging
2500 homegrown artisanal brands
Order tracking
Quality checks
...a one-stop-shop democratizing small volume exports
*in the US Home Decor Market- Phase 1
Price
THE OPPORTUNITY- VALUE CREATION
No players cross border Cultural Distance
No players curation + design intervention + legacy art
curated, designed handcrafted legacy art curated +homegrown brands + prints
Prisha India Craft Banjara Market, Gurugram
non-curation + surplus markets
non-curation local brands
Value Addition
4 of 4000 Indigenous artforms ready to move up the value chain. Blue Pottery Terracotta Phad Chitra Ajrakh
BLUE
POTTERY
A Cultural Melting Pot Blue Pottery evolved through Chinese glazing technology & Persian decorative arts Rather, it is a quartz body containing glass powder that is formed by the addition of natural gum to give green strength. Using ceramic colors with blue predominating, the glaze once again is a lead borosilicate frit suspended in maida.
Example of Chinese Glazing technique, Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644)
Blue color was maximum used in the blue pottery Jaipur for various reasons including the easy availability of the Thamda and Setha which were discovered by Sri Kripal Singh Ji to be identical to the oxides of copper and cobalt. However, the blue color was also traditionally used in the Jaipur Blue Pottery, which was initially born from the Mughal Art of Khurja Blue Pottery.
Blue pottery has a fascinating history. It originated in China probably during 618917 A.D., whereafter it reached some Islamic countries. Islamic potters aimed primarily at the richness of colours and decoration rather than shapes. From such countries this art reached Khurja, and that is why an impression of Islamic culture can still be seen in the Khurja Blue Pottery. But on the contrary, the Blue Pottery of Jaipur, in spite of being relatively newer in standing, was never limited to any spacetime continuum. Once lost almost completely, the Jaipur blue pottery was revived in 1965 by Sri Kripal Singh Ji with his tireless efforts, and he became the leading exponent of the art form. The Blue art pottery of Jaipur is famous for quartz-based, low-temperature decorative wares, and in fact no clay is used as the base material, either in the body or in the glaze.
Watercolor of ceramic ornamentation on the interior of the Usto Ali mausoleum in Samarkand (1380)
Various products with Blue pottery
A special combination of powdered quartz, glass pieces, and other minerals is used to make Blue pottery which can last up to 200 years. The blue pottery is classified as fritware and is a blend of ground quartz, green glass, fuller's earth, borax, and gum. No actual clay is used either in the body of the pot or glaze.
Quartz
The ingredients are kneaded into dough, straightened, and pressed into an open shape. It is then dried in the sun, and smoothened over to be painted. At last, they are kept ablaze at 800-850°C for six hours in a shut furnace fuelled with charcoal. The detailed black decoration is heated directly into the clear lead-free glaze, giving it a tough, resilient, dishwasher-proof finish. The kiln is left to cool for three days, avoiding any rapid temperature change that easily cracks the china clay. Interestingly, Jaipur’s blue pottery is also the only form of low-temperature glazed pottery which is made with a single firing process.
Glass
Fuller’ s Earth
Salt (Sajja)
Raw materials used in making of Blue pottery Edible Gum
TERRACOTTA
One of the Oldest Materials used to make Art, Terracotta is considered an auspicious mix of five elements: Air, Water, Earth, Fire, and Ether In India, Terracotta is an ancient art form, perhaps one of the first expressions of creativity of the human mind. In fact, the use of the five elements: air, water, earth, fire, and ether in the Terracotta art form lends it both an air of mystery and auspiciousness as per Hindu beliefs. Terracotta figurines of the mother goddess, male gods, and terracotta cart frames and wheels dating back to around 7000 BC have been excavated from various sites of Indus Valley Civilization like Birhana, Mehrgarh, Mohenjodaro, etc. The art form also had an important role to play in the trade activities of this ancient civilization.
Terracotta figurines from Indus Valley archeological sites
In the rest of the world, terracotta art has been in existence for thousands of years. In Egypt, Terracotta house models dating back to around 1900 BC have been excavated. These models were part of the burials of poor people and usually were replicas of their dwellings. Mesopotamian civilization was also rich in arts and crafts and beautiful terracotta figurines of goddesses and small statues from around the 19th century BC have been found by archaeologists. Bell Idols or female statuettes having mobile legs from 8th century BC Greece is a noteworthy example of Terracotta art in the ancient world. Another terracotta wonder from the ancient world is the Terracotta Army of China from 210 BC, part of an ancient necropolis, and built by the emperor Qin Shi Huang.
India has a deep connection with the modest Baked Earth. Terracotta still remains an integral aspect of homemade art and pottery in the country.
The other name for terracotta is baked earth, which showcases the fact that terracotta is 100% natural. The base material of terracotta is clay, which is a naturally occurring material. The clay used by artists comes from local ponds and riverbanks that is usually mixed with animal dung to make it suitable for molding. In the process of manufacturing terracotta, there is the inclusion of no artificial materials or any other material, making it one of the most eco-friendly and natural art form.
Today, terracotta is still used in pottery and art for the home and beyond. Areas such as Rajasthan and Gujarat are famous for their white-painted terracotta jars, while Madhya Pradesh is known for embellished terracotta rooftops.
It has been a mainstay of Indian construction and culture since the Indus Valley Civilisation, which existed between 3300 and 1700 BC. Many ancient terracotta artifacts have been found in India, often depicting deities.
Roof Tile Craft of Barpali, Orissa
The Ayanaar horse made of terracotta created in Tamil Nadu. Due to its extensive background, it’s no wonder India has some prominence when it comes to terracotta. Most famously, the largest terracotta sculpture ever made was the Ayanaar horse – created in Tamil Nadu.
Terracotta industry is one of the important cottage industries in terms of its unique design, structure, lustrous finishing, and a cord of communicating and transforming the culture of concerned region. Rajasthan, an arid state, also has a special connection with clay and terracotta as people in villages carry water from distant sources to their homes in terracotta pots. Moreover, their daily worship is connected to terracotta idols of deities.
PHAD CHITRA
700-year-old fading Performance & Visual Art kept alive by a small community of Artists.
Phad is a type of scroll painting that narrates elaborate religious stories of local deities and gods. Created as traveling or mobile temples, these traditional paintings were carried by priestsingers of the Rabari tribe, called Bhopas and Bhopis, who would sing and perform stories of their local deities - Devnarayanji (a reincarnation of Vishnu) and Pabuji (a local hero).
Till as recently as 50 years ago, the form of phad was exclusively practiced by the artists of Joshi lineage of the Chippa caste. The Joshi artists were commissioned by the bhopa and bhopi to create the phad artworks and carefully guarded the techniques associated with the art.
The Phad painting would be unrolled or unfolded after sunset, and the performance in front of village members would last into the night. This is perhaps why the paintings are called ‘Phad’, which means ‘fold’ in the local dialect.
However, one of the most celebrated phad artists and Kalyan’s father, Shree Lal Joshi, realized the need to let in others on the secrets of phad and established Joshi Kala Kunj, a school of phad, in 1960 to popularise the art. The school, now called Chitrashala, teaches phad art to those from outside the clan. Kalyan and his brother Gopal are carrying forward their father’s legacy by introducing new themes without compromising on the traditional techniques.
Shri Lal Joshi teaching the art of Phad
AJRAKH
Harmony of Colors. Red for Earth, Black for Darkness, White for Clouds and Blue for Universe itself.
Fragment from Block Print Ceremonial Banner, possibly 14th century Traditionally, Ajrak is the name of a block printed cloth with deep crimson red and indigo blue background, bearing symmetrical patterns with interspersed unprinted sparkling white motifs. An ancient craft, the history of the Ajrak can be traced back to the civilizations of the Indus Valley that existed around 2500 BC-1500 BC. The term “Ajrak”, may be derived from “Azrak”, meaning blue in Arabic, as blue happens to be one of the principal colours in Ajrak printing. More than a fabric, Ajrak is a Sindhi tradition; found in daily usages such as hammocks and bedsheets to dupattas, scarves, and even gifts as a token of respect.
The highly valued Ajrak has also been made in Kutch for the Maldharis or cattle herders’ communities since the time Khatris migrated from Sindh in the 16th century. The Khatri community, whose name means “one who fills or changes colours,” printed cloth with the locally available natural dyes and water from the Dhamadka, the river that gave their village its name.
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