Celebrating World Artisan Day: E-commerce empowering India's artisans

As India's crop harvesting season gathers pace, World Artisan Day on April 18 provides us the perfect occasion to remember the people who have powered this rich civilization for thousands of years. Our country boasts of a vast pool of artisans, weavers, and craftspeople. As our economy is making strides in AI, semiconductors, and the technologies of the future, it becomes imperative to empower and nurture India's artisans who have sustained the craft legacy.

Enter ecommerce—providing a cutting-edge, tech-enabled platform with its massive infrastructure of warehouses and sortation centres and its robust digital payment systems. This tech-enabled platform, along with the ecosystem built over the years, has helped thousands of artisans and craftspeople onboard the endless world of digital commerce and showcase their unique products and capabilities to a much bigger market.

The story of many such entrepreneurs is a great reminder of what technology can do to pull the disadvantaged out of their economic hardship and improve lives.

Take the case Om Ahuja and his Gir Honey [1], the brand making waves on social media and in homes and kitchens. Established in 2012 as a family business,  initially operated on a B2B model. However, two years ago, Om took a bold step into the digital world, onboarding a homegrown  and shifting the business to B2C to expand its reach to national markets. This strategic move has enabled Gir Honey to tap into the growing demand for organic products and grow its business manifold.

Similarly, Ashim Kumar Das, inspired by Bengal's rich textile heritage, founded Potli by Scarpa Italia to sell handcrafted bags made from Baluchari silk, Jamdani, Kantha stitch, and other traditional cotton weaves. Prodded by the state government's outreach to empower its citizens, he joined a homegrown ecommerce platform last year and sells his unique range of sling bags, side bags, handbags, and laptop bags online to a national audience.

To the credit of India's ecommerce companies, they have integrated themselves with the country's local talent, recognizing that early on as being integral to the success and sustainability of a business. Many of them have long had programmes to work with artisans, weavers and the entire craft community to handhold them at every step and expand their operations, in the process also helping the world discover a deep treasure of art and craft.

Flipkart, India's homegrown e-commerce marketplace, has empowered over 1.8 million livelihoods in the last 6 years through its Samarth program and has enabled them to build online capabilities through training and onboarding support while also offering access to the company's nationwide customer base of more than 500 million. The programme offers digital skilling and has more than 2000 active artisans, micro, small, and medium enterprises, women, self-help groups, and differently abled entrepreneurs.

Warraque Ahmed, running Dujjana Silk Emporium in Varanasi [2], Uttar Pradesh, is one such entrepreneur to have gained from . What started as a spontaneous thought post his graduation in Arts has today blossomed into a flourishing saree business rooted in the rich weaving traditions of Varanasi.

"I just felt our Banarasi  deserves to be seen and appreciated more," he shares. There are several more in his home state, and those in Haryana, West Bengal, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh have benefited from such endeavors.

Notwithstanding the fact that Indian artisans now enjoy sizable government support through policy intervention and institutional funding and have also earned world recognition for their work, Indian e-commerce platforms remain relentless in their pursuit of empowering the great coalition of artisans, weavers, and craftsmen. They continue to bring tools of innovation, financing, and technology to help artisans and entrepreneurs scale up and capture new geographies. With e-commerce as their trusted partner, the Indian artisan community can confidently aspire to a bigger stake in the competitive landscape.

[Disclaimer: Kapil Thirani is Senior Director - Marketplace at Flipkart, where he plays a key role in shaping the platform's ecosystem for sellers, artisans, and MSMEs. With a focus on inclusive digital commerce, he drives initiatives that empower local entrepreneurs and expand access to e-commerce across India.]