Digital India dream is becoming a reality with Modi govt promoting e-Retailing major Flipkart to provide an online marketing platform to handloom weavers across the country, to empower the weavers and uplift hand loom industry.

Textiles Secretary S K Panda said the agreement was on a pilot basis and after a period of 3 to 6 months Textile ministry will go for e-bidding for a marketing portal. The focus of the partnership is to help weavers and weaver entrepreneurs to produce products in tune with the buyer requirements and grow them significantly so that they may become manufacturers not only at a local but also at a national level. Flipkart will provide weavers in India an online marketing platform, infrastructural support in data analytics and customer acquisition to help them get remunerative prices for their products and scale up their business.

‘It will help flipkart to reach out to thousands of weavers across India and give them a direct platform to the weavers to reach out to the end-customers without middlemen’ sais Ankit Nagori, vice president-marketplace at Flipkart. Flipkart will charge weavers a 3 to 4 per cent commission on sale and the customers also pay 3 to 4 per cent commission on that sale. But will charge 15 per cent commission from ready made garments suppliers. ‘No charge for listing products or customers to browse the catalogs and products.

Data analytics and market intelligence provided by Flipkart will help the weavers focus only on producing better saleable product ranges. This in turn will help them plan their production and inventory and expand their business. E-commerce is one of the thrust areas for the Narendra Modi government. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget had allowed manufacturing companies to sell their products through retail, including e-commerce platforms,without any additional approval.