MUMBAI: With a view of giving a boost to the handloom industry of the county, the Ministry of Textiles has announced that the Ministry through Development Commissioner for Handlooms has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with e-commerce platform Flipkart. The aim of the partnership is to provide online marketing coverage to the sector.

The collaboration will empower the weavers and boost manufacturing in the country. Through this exclusive agreement, Flipkart’s aim is to provide weavers in India online marketing platform, infrastructural support in data analytics and customer acquisition to help them get remunerative prices for their products and scale up their business.

The MoU was signed in the presence of the Minister of State (Independent Charge) Textiles, Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Flipkart VP – Marketplace, Ankit Nagori, Development Commissioner (Handlooms) SK Panda and other officials of the Ministry of Textiles.

The Minister for Textiles while speaking on the occasion congratulated the heads all the organisations and maintained that they must work tirelessly for the uplift of weavers and ensure the success of the venture. He mentioned that periodic review of the sales and progress of the weavers in the targeted clusters should be carried out emphasising that the focus of this association should be to help weavers and weaver entrepreneurs to produce products in tune with the buyer requirements and grow significantly so that they may become manufacturers not only at a local but also at a national level.

According to the release by Ministry; this kind of a coordinated effort has been planned and executed for the first time with Flipkart for handloom weavers which will bridge the missing linkages of market intelligence, market access and logistics and help the Indian weavers in getting remunerative prices for their products.

The weavers will sell their products under their brand name and evolve as an entrepreneur selling his products directly to buyers across the country without stepping out of their workplace. The data analytics and market intelligence provided by Flipkart will help the weavers focus only on producing better saleable product ranges. This in turn will help them plan their production and inventory and expand their business.

This partnership will connect the artisans directly to the buyers and the guidance by Flipkart in packaging, collecting and delivering to the buyer will motivate the artisans in rural India.

Earlier this month, Flipkart signed a MoU with the Ministry of Labour and Employment's Directorate General of Employment & Training (DGET), aiming to train at least 5,000 students by December. Flipkart joined hands with the government to train people from semi-urban and rural areas and possibly employ them at the company or its business partners.