Varanasi Artisans Ready to Spin New Success Story Through Snapdeal-India Post Deal
Varanasi Artisans Ready to Spin New Success Story Through Snapdeal-India Post Deal
Online e-commerce giant Snapdeal has just partnered India Post for working with thousands of weavers and artisans from Varanasi via its website.
A Stitch in Time
Snapdeal has launched a pilot project with India Post for establishing facilitation desks at Varanasi post offices for enabling local weavers to sell their products on its online platform. “This is an endeavour by Snapdeal and India Post to empower local artisans, small and medium entrepreneurs to sustain their livelihood by providing a platform to popularise their indigenous products,” Snapdeal CEO and co-founder Kunal Bahl was quoted as saying by PTI.
Weaving Wonders
Via this association, weavers can access the national audience through product listing on Snapdeal at minimal costs, Post offices will be the dropping point for sellers and the goods will be delivered via India Post to the buyers.
“India has a number of unique and highly specialised art forms and weaves. However, with the fast changing fashion trends and readily available products we are losing out on this rich heritage. If we don’t act now, soon the rich designs and weaves will be extinct,” Bahl was quoted as saying.
Passion for Fashion
Via this partnership, Snapdeal will be taking the weavers to customers in all parts of the country and work towards the expansion of this platform to include more artisans and weavers from different corners of the nation as well. An “India Post” store will be created for featuring the associated sellers and acting as the exclusive gateway for their products.
Gurgaon based Snapdeal will also share its knowledge and expertise for fashion and market insights with weavers for enabling them to create designs and products which will provide appeal to customers across the nation. India Post has previously partner with Snapdeal for reaching out to philatelists for stamps priced between INR 300 and 5,500.
About India Post
India Post is the most well distributed postal system in India. There are over 1.54 lakh post offices all over the nation. The partnership has been launched for Varanasi weavers at present. The Department of Posts has worked for more than 150 years and it forms the root of India’s communication network and plays an important role in its socio-economic development. Life insurance cover is provided under the Postal Life Insurance and Rural Postal Life Insurance and retail services such as sale of forms and bill collection are also part of the services offered by DoP.
The Department of Post also performs other services such as disbursement of wages and old age pension payments for MNREGS or Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Of its post offices, 89.76% are in rural areas. This department and its communication network has experienced a 7 fold rise in terms of growth since independence. With new agreements on the way, India Post is all set to follow a pattern of stable growth and development through the e-commerce boom.
