SRINAGAR, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR – Inside a two-story building in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, young men and women sit at computer workstations.
Several silk carpets lie rolled up on the floor. Employees add images of the carpets and information about them to an online catalogue of products.
This is the office of KashmirBox, an e-commerce marketplace that connects local artisans to online buyers so that they can earn fair wages for their work.
Injustice in the local craft industry helped to inspire the company’s start, says Kashif Ahmad Khan, one of the co-founders. While researching products to sell in an e-commerce marketplace, Khan went to the home of a woman who wove carpets.
Her small house had a loom and a few kitchen utensils. Plastic covered the windows.
The woman made carpets worth 1 million Indian rupees ($16,750) for big hotels, Khan says. But she told him that the amount dealers paid her for her carpets was so little that she could not afford to buy glass windowpanes. She also struggled to support her children.
Similar stories motivated Khan and two other Kashmiris – Muheet Mehraj and Ishfaq Mir – to start KashmirBox in 2011. The online company removes the middlemen in art, craft and food sales so artisans can earn fair payment for their work. Products range from bronze home decor to Kashmiri apples to pashminas.
E-Sparks 2013, a platform that showcases India’s e-commerce startups, named KashmirBox one of India’s hottest e-commerce startups in 2013.
KashmirBox currently works with about 30 artisans, Mehraj says. It receives 10 to 12 orders every day from Indian and international buyers, Khan says. And that is without marketing, Mehraj says.
While researching to create an e-commerce portal in Kashmir, Khan and Mehraj discovered that salesmen significantly underpay local artisans for their crafts.
“I found out that they don’t get [their] due share, their economic condition is down, and they lack global recognition,” Khan says. “And I realized there was a need to do something for them.”
Many Kashmiri artisans shared stories of underpayment with them, Khan says. He met a wood carver who told him that a furniture dealer had paid him 15,000 rupees ($250) for a bed he had carved from walnut wood. The dealer then sold the bed to a buyer for 90,000 rupees ($1,500) – six times the price the dealer had paid the wood carver.
The profits were going to the wrong people, and local artisans could not support themselves, Mehraj says.
“Their conditions were heartbreaking,” Mehraj says. “What we found was that all the profit was going to the middlemen while the manufacturer was getting nothing.”
This was causing the craft industry to deteriorate in Kashmir, Mehraj says. Younger generations began pursuing other occupations instead of continuing the trade.
“In any other place in the world, a son can proudly say that his father is an artist,” he says. “But here, an artisan’s child is unable to have that pride.”
Plans for KashmirBox fell into place when the founders’ research revealed that consumers wanted these authentic Kashmiri products, Mehraj says.
“There was a need from both sides – from the customers as well as artisans – to have a general marketplace where you could get all products of Kashmir,” he says. “So we were kind of bringing all the products of Kashmir to a customer.”
This concept inspired KashmirBox’s name, Mehraj says.
“When you have many things, you usually bring them in a container or a box,” he says, smiling. “That is how we named it KashmirBox.”
Mir joined the team after hearing the duo’s idea and recognizing their dynamism, passion and understanding of technology, he says.
“As a businessman, I saw an opportunity,” he says. “While as a citizen, I saw there was a social element too. It was beneficial to all.”
Then, they persuaded artisans to participate, Mehraj says.
“It was very difficult to make them understand how we were going to sell their products through [the] computer, but eventually we succeeded,” Mehraj says, smiling.
Mushtaq Ahmad, a shawl weaver, says that before he started selling his crafts through KashmirBox, his dealers took a long time to pay him. He joined KashmirBox when the company started, and his sales are much higher now.
“We get more profit and are paid quickly there,” he says.
Incredible Kashmiri Crafts, a company in Kashmir that makes and sells crafts, including bags, cushion covers and embroidered felt rugs, used to sell products only at exhibitions, says Arifa, the company’s managing director.
“We have been selling our products directly to customers at exhibitions because we want to save ourselves and our artisans from exploitation,” says Arifa, which is her full name.
But Incredible Kashmiri Crafts’ sales have increased since it started selling products on KashmirBox, she says. And KashmirBox is transparent with artisans about the crafts’ selling prices.
“We get paid quickly,” she says. “Also, we know at what price they are selling our products. It is going good, and we hope that it gets better.”
The portal has increased artisans’ incomes by eliminating the dealers, which means almost all of the profits go to the artisans, Mehraj says. KashmirBox allows the artisans to choose their products’ selling price, and the company receives around 10 percent of that amount.
“We earn only when he earns,” Mehraj says.
The artisans bring their crafts to the KashmirBox office, where its team includes it in the online product catalogue for free, he says. After, the artisans take their products back and may sell them in the meantime.
“If an order is placed and the artisan has sold the product, we ask the buyer if he is willing to wait for some days,” Mehraj says. “If he is ready, we give money to the artisan for raw materials.”
If a customer is willing to wait, KashmirBox sometimes sends the buyer a video of the artisan creating the product, Mehraj says.
“If it is a shawl, we send a video of the weaver weaving to the customer so that he really sees the process and knows it is actually [a] handmade product that he is buying,” he says.
KashmirBox emphasizes quality, Mehraj says.
“Each product undergoes quality check by our quality control team before being shipped,” he says.
The KashmirBox founders also want to increase buyers’ knowledge of the artisans, Mehraj says.
“No one knows who makes the products,” he says. “What we are doing is that we are featuring these artisans on our website so that people know who creates these products.”
Local papers also publish features about the artisans, which boosts their recognition locally, Mehraj says.
The founders of KashmirBox plan to continue to help the artisans to develop their brands.
“Our aim is to create 1,000 brands of Kashmir having global recognition by 2017,” Mehraj says. “Additionally, we want to help these artisans to earn more money and create a sustainable livelihood.”
They say they also want to help the artisans to support their families.
“KashmirBox is a social enterprise initiative, and 10 percent of our profit goes to KashmirBox Foundation, which is meant to help the artisan community,” Mehraj says. “So besides ensuring that they get paid better for their craft, we also want to help them out in things like education or marriages of their children or any other problem they might be having.”
Interviews were conducted in English, Urdu and Kashmiri.
