Nand Kishore Chaudhary has empowered rural and tribal women in India by seamlessly weaving them into the fabric of a profitable business of handwoven carpets
My comments from this article..Read the full article at Forbes here.
Impact investor Nagaraja Prakasam, part of the Indian Angel Network, narrates one such story of Chaudhary’s impact on women empowerment in rural India. When he visited the artisans of Jaipur Rugs in 2015, Prakasam met a girl at her home in Achrol, Rajasthan. He asked her why she was not studying to which she said her family could not afford to send her to college. “But she was doing a correspondence course, which she paid for from the earnings she made from knotting carpets [for Jaipur Rugs],” says Prakasam.
When Chaudhary started his business in 1978—it was an unregistered entity with no branding of products—he dealt only with male artisans. But he noticed that they were not serious about work and were on leave most of the time. Emboldened by his friend Cooper’s advice, Chaudhary started inducting more women into his workforce and realised that they were more receptive, efficient, dedicated and diligent.
Fellow social entrepreneur William Bissell, managing director of Fabindia Overseas Pvt Ltd which owns and operates the retail chain Fabindia, commends Chaudhary for having created a grassroots network that has come to be a “significant empowerer of rural women”. Bissell himself is an advocate of women’s empowerment through Fabindia’s connect with rural artisans across India.
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Chaudhary also built his social venture in a bid to remove the middleman and connect artisans directly with the end customer. The benefit: Artisans get paid their rightful dues and aren’t cheated. Today, Chaudhary looks to his children to strengthen his commitments, giving an equal opportunity to his daughters and sons in the business. He sent all his five children—three daughters and two sons—abroad for higher education.
Read the full article at Forbes here. PUBLISHED: Jan 16, 2018
My earlier field visit to Jaipur Rugs.
Rajasthan crafts women Vs BMW, Audi, Bentley designers…and the award goes to…
How to get more value for this great efforts, Jaipur Rugs is trying an approach where they are making these women to design their own carpet. In one such effort few women working on the same carpet tried different designs on disagreement. Jaipur Rugs called it as “Project Error” – Antar – Differences and guess what, this design has been nominated for German Design Awards competing with BMW, Bentley, Audi, Benz designers and they won a “Special Mention” along with Audi, BMW designers!