Online marketplace Snapdeal has partnered India Post to jointly work on bringing thousands of weavers and artisans from Varanasi through its website.
Snapdeal has launched a pilot with India Post to set-up facilitation desks at Varanasi post offices to enable local weavers to sell on its 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 told PTI.
Through this association, weavers will be able to access the national audience by listing their products on Snapdeal, at negligible cost, he added.
The post offices will act as a dropping point for sellers, and India Post will deliver the goods 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,” he said.
Through this partnership, Snapdeal will take the Banarasi weaves to customers in all corners of the country and extend this platform to include more weavers and artisans of the country, Bahl added.
Snapdeal will also create an ‘India Post’ store to feature the associated sellers exclusively.
Besides, the City-based firm will also share its expertise in fashion and market insights with weavers to help them create designs and products, which will appeal to a variety of customers across the country, he said.
Previously, India Post had partnered with Snapdeal to reach out to the philatelists to offer stamps priced between Rs. 300 and Rs. 5,500.
India Post is world’s most widely distributed postal system with over 1.54 lakh post offices all over the country.
