“For those who appreciate traditional skills, genuine handmade products, created, not procured, Indha Craft offers unique and exclusive designs which generate a living for skilled, but marginalized women, helping them to dare to dream once again.”
History and Background
The story of Indha goes back to 1996, when a Foundation called Literacy India was established as a non-for profit organization, with the objective of empowering underprivileged children and women and making them self-sufficient. Literacy India has endeavored to meet this objective through imparting education and developing a platform for the underprivileged children to achieve a variety of skills in performing arts, science, technology and vocation, giving the children basic human values, dignity of labor, self-belief and dreams with an ultimate goal of enabling them to support themselves and their families. Today, Literacy India operates through a number of projects dedicated to child and adult literacy and vocational training. Project Karigari aims at imparting vocational training for sewing, embroidery, driving, computers, beauty culture etc. Indha was born out of Literacy India, with a distinctly felt need to attain self sufficiency and sustainability as well as scale for their projects, especially with respect to Project Karigari – aimed at developing the Skills for artisans, a diminishing art form with the evolution of modern technologies. The need for Indha arose when women trained under Karigari found it difficult to support themselves financially due to restrictions imposed upon them regarding moving out of the village to find work. In 2004, production centers were set up in the villages of Daulatabad, Sarai and Bajghera to facilitate them in supporting themselves. Unlike private companies in the handicraft sector that align themselves with skilled workers, as an organization, Literacy India and Indha, invest in the training of artisans and in ensuring their well being by providing higher wages, medical benefits, financial education and good work conditions.
Indha – Literacy India:
A unique partnership joined with the proverbial umbilical cord. While Indha is an independent enterprise, it continues a unique relationship with Literacy India as partners. Literacy India is the training and capacitating partner and Indha provides employment opportunities for artisans with the potential to create world class products. In addition to this, Literacy India also provides the channel for Indha’s CSR Sales for its handcrafted products. Together, they create a complete eco-system promoting a RISK FREE Micro Entrepreneurship business Model for Village Level Artisans.
Vision statement
To create sustainable livelihood opportunities for women in rural India and improve their economic and social
condition, enabling them to live a life of dignity
To make opportunities
for livelihood available
to all rural woman
through Indha.
To develop sustainable
handicraft units providing
a permanent means of
income generation.
To enable funding for
other projects of
Literacy india through
profits generated.
Objectives
01
To develop Brand Indha, recognized
internationally by communication its
mission and promoting quality products
02
To tap into the exhaustive skill set available
in rural India and train the workforce to be in
sync with market requirements
Short term goals
Provide employment opportunities to minimum of 350 women in rural India after their training as artisans in Literacy India.
Long term goals
01
To increase the number of women artisians to 1500 and to generate fair profits to enable grants to Literacy India for scaling other projects
02
Both these goals will be achieved through scaling the current revenue from the current $90K to $1M in 5 years
03
Create robust marketing and sales platform to support the sales and revenue of our products as well as create a channel for other partner’s products where required
04
Ready platform or companies to invest CSR funds or run CSR programs through Literacy india as a partner
