Culture, craft & chutzpah

There are two ways Indian art and craft have always been sold in India,” says social entrepreneur and storyteller of rural artisans Vinay Prashant. The first approach, he says, is to evoke sympathy: ‘Oh, the craftsmen will starve and the craft will die if you don’t buy.’ The other method is to have art and handicrafts in such premium places and galleries, “where only the super-rich can afford to pay even the parking fee for the venue.”

Vinay, co-founder of Tamaala, which makes affordable Indian craft merchandise and gifts, has perhaps put the pulse on the pain point that ails the country’s arts and crafts. This is a sector caught between pity-selling and posh settings, middlemen and a middle class that knows well the value of a handcrafted piece but is unwilling to pay the price for its worth, not to mention governments which have not invested in making it prosperous despite grand declarations about the necessity to preserve and protect Indian art. This leaves the entire sector at the mercy of bureaucracy, middlemen and market-unfriendly policies.

Given these inherent roadblocks, a business that is built around Indian art, craft, cuisine, culture or travel inevitably struggles to be profitable and thrive on its own merit. 

But this scene is changing, thanks to a creature called the cultural entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are those who don’t sit around and wait for governments to give them things on a platter; they already know or identify the problem firsthand, face obstacles at every turn, figure out what it takes to solve it, and do it. Cultural entrepreneurs — like their counterparts who had birthed a similar change in India’s IT sector two decades ago — are the antidote to what the doctor has not yet prescribed for the ailing sector.

Passion is the common factor

Who are these new entrepreneurs, and where are they emerging from? Some from the old block itself — like Pawan Dewangan in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh whose family has been into weaving exquisite Kosa Tussar silk sarees for generations; his father had received the 2005 National Award for best weaver at the hands of the then President Abdul Kalam. Pawan today is an artisan entrepreneur at Yogita Kosa Hub, a business that now involves men and women of 35 weaver families hailing from his village, Chandrapur.

In urban India, many are stepping in to establish cultural companies as first-generation entrepreneurs — Ashirbani Roy of Aashirs had a promising job with a leading MNC. Anushka Jaisinghani, founder of SnackMe, is an HR-person-turned-foodpreneur. Vinay Prashant was helping Radio Mirchi set up stations across India, Vinay Parameswarappa worked in Singapore and got his MBA in London before he started Gully Tours to tour the streets of Bengaluru and Mysuru.

The ‘product’ of each business may be different, but passion is the common factor. So are the types of challenges most such entrepreneurs face.

Usha Satish Mudukutore, who describes herself as “sometimes CEO/sometimes driver-maid-installation person” of her enterprise, Ind Eclectik, says: “Humans work on three dimensions — time, space and creativity. Artisans work with no constraints. They would just like to create. Often, what we envisage, they cannot; this creates a huge gap.” 

“The toughest bit is that a creator also has to constantly be more — photographer, videographer, editor, financier, all rolled into one. A homegrown woman entrepreneur is juggling so many hats, it can get overwhelming sometimes,” says Meghna Khanna, Founder of The Bindi Project who handmakes premium bindis. 

Swetha Sunderraman jumped from an MNC during Covid to start The Indian Motif after having tried to help weavers by getting friends and family to make purchases. “Most of us work with disadvantaged social sections, unstructured procurement and supply chain processes, and cash economy with minimal or no credit cycles. Most such startups are bootstrapped with limited access to funding,” says Swetha. 

A point top bureaucrat Jayesh Ranjan concurs with. Ranjan, credited with galvanising many startup and tech initiatives, and currently Special Chief Secretary to the Government of Telangana, Industries & Commerce Department, says that “while venture funding is available even to early-stage entrepreneurs in IT, cultural entrepreneurs face a huge barrier in this regard. Therein lies the catch — funding is required at an early stage to develop a strong cultural product, but potential funders bring their fund only after a strong product is available and is yielding results.”

Utilising soft power

It is to help deal with conundrums like these that serial entrepreneur-chartered accountant Hari Kiran Vadlamani, along with investor and startup-mentor Sanjay Anandaram, founded NICE, Network of Indian Cultural Enterprises. Says the latter: “Hari and I had been talking for a few years about Brand India and the soft power we have as a nation. The idea of forming NICE was to create economic value out of our greatest asset, our culture.”

To build cultural enterprises, “providing access to money, investors, service providers like lawyers, accountants, designers, packaging partners; creating forums for entrepreneurs to meet and collaborate; accelerating learnings through training workshops, giving them insights on understanding the customer, conducting research... all this needs to come together,” he adds. A not-for-profit, NICE has built a community of 1,400 enterprises throughout India, of whom 60 per cent have women founders, says its CEO Kanchana KV. In the last few years, especially during Covid, the network has done innovative programmes online and on the ground that include business plan competitions for early and growth stage cultural entrepreneurs, sessions that taught founders how to pitch to investors, and got experts to teach them, among other things, sales. Says Vinay of Tamaala, “At one of the cohorts, I remember business mentor Vijay Ladha shifting our thinking to numbers and telling us to not get caught up in stories. We tend to get lost in the feeling that we are saving handicrafts, etc., but if we don’t survive in business, who will we save?”

Good storytelling has its place, of course, especially when social media is the direct sales channel for many entrepreneurs. Pawan, for instance, makes sure his Instagram is updated with the latest colours and designs of the sarees; Vinay and his team are always trying to up their visual content, which then creates a community of city explorers. 

But other perils lurk in this line of business. Ask Venkatesh Narasimhan, the IAS officer credited with the turnaround of Co-optex, Tamil Nadu Handloom Weavers’ Co-operative Society Ltd. Venkatesh, who as the Managing Director, switched to wearing colourful Ikat and handloom shirts to work, says entrepreneurs have to contend with constant threats like designs and weaves being outdone by powerloom or machine-made substitutes at a quarter of the cost. There is also the issue of idea or product design being stolen; which is why IP (Intellectual Property) and patent awareness become critical to business. 

Vijayalaxmi Chhabra, veteran broadcaster and a hugely popular saree influencer, brings up another issue — of steep pricing of handmades that drives the current generation to look for cheaper Western alternatives.   

Given the extent of challenges as also the potential to grow Indian products into global brands, can cultural entrepreneurship be left to the entrepreneur ecosystem alone? NICE doesn’t think so. “We want to work with governments to create cultural entrepreneurship as a category,” says Sanjay. “The biggest hurdle to overcome is the mindset as no one thinks of culture as monetisable. But when government money flows into something, schemes happen, a ministry owns it, there is then a method to define it.”

Says Jayesh, “A cultural enterprise that showcases something unique about a country or a region is very useful for the government as well. It brings new jobs, creates new economic opportunities and contributes to the GDP.”

Besides the hard work, what is crucial is to build India’s collective self-belief and confidence that we can be world-class. Says Sanjay Anandaram, “When a celeb wears a $50k gown on the red carpet at Cannes, we are thrilled because say, a sleeve embroidery was done by some artisan in India. That artisan will get his 15 minutes of fame and, if he is lucky, $1000. But the designer makes most of the money. It is time we moved from being commodity labour to being designer and the brand ourselves.”

As iconic herbal beauty care pioneer Shahnaz Hussain said famously, “I sold a 5,000-year-old civilization in a jar.”

Cultural catalysts

Here are a few founders of cultural enterprises from across India who are beginning to make a mark across sectors like food, fabric, and experiential tourism by combining entrepreneurial spirit with social responsibility. Their stories capture the growing desire to preserve and showcase the country’s cultural heritage. 

1. Anushka Jaisinghani - Ready-to-cook Indian snacks (from 2010)

Her workforce constitutes 70 per cent of women. Around 25,000 samosas are made in a day. Her vision is to craft Indian snacks while employing individuals from low-income groups. She aspires to have a unit of her own by 2026 to make 1 lakh samosas a day and to be known as the 'Samosa Queen' of India!

2. Vinay Parameswarappa - Experiential travel and learning tours (from 2009)

He has had over 35,000 tour attendees and has conducted more than 3,000 tours a year. He hopes to inspire engagement with the culture and history of Bengaluru and Mysuru. His vision is to create powerful visual content that captures the complexities of India and create a community around this idea.

3. Moumita Dey - Handcrafted sarees from Bengal (from 2012)

She employs over 400 women and more than 1,000 women have been upskilled, thanks to her enterprise. Her vision is to help rural women artisans become financially empowered and she aspires to become a household name in handcrafted sarees. 

4. Meghna Khanna - Handmade, reusable bindis (from 2022)

The standard red bindi stickers were used widely by the 1980s. Today, Meghna's enterprise is bringing statement bindis back into circulation. She hopes it will help women express their 'inner goddess'.

5. Ashirbani Roy - Handcrafted Indian fashion jewellery (from 2010)

Her website boasts over 100,000 visitors per month. Her vision is to promote Indian culture through jewellery made by marginalised women and people with disabilities. 

6. Pawan Dewangan - Kosa Tussar silk sarees from Chattisgarh (from 1985)

At Dewangan's enterprise, nearly 100 sarees are weaved in a month and more than 35 families are involved in the weaving process. He hopes to open outlets that can sell the sarees directly to the customer. At present, they are sold through social media and retail brands.

(The author is an independent journalist, podcaster and solo traveller across 17 states of India, noting interesting people and events.)