Artisan Entrepreneurs

✓  Handicrafts as an employment opportunity, stands next only to agriculture in developing nations.

✓  India currently supplies less than 2% of global Handicrafts demand.

✓  Majority of the artisans are Rural women

✓  Domestic crime rate drops significantly with the economic empowerment of women

✓  Economically empowered rural women invest all their earnings in their families

Artisan Industry is the second largest employer in developing nations, after agriculture and largely employs women. India accounts for 7 million artisans as per official report (200 million as per unofficial data). Despite the huge number of artisans, and the direct impact of the industry on the rural lives and the women, the industry is not organized well and receives little support in promoting its handmade goods in the international market. As a result of which, India stands at a meagre 2% while China stands at 30% in the global handmade industry.
The Handicrafts Board of India, in an assessment done in 2013/2014 had concluded that apart from the artisan sector being highly unorganized, it faces other challenges such as low capital, poor exposure to new technologies, absence of market intelligence and most important of all – a poor institutional framework. The census data suggests that there are roughly 68.86 lakh artisans in India, 55% of which are women.
Research studies suggest that the number of Indian artisans have been rapidly decreasing, indicating the urgent need to reinvest in India’s artisans to safeguard history, culture as an important source of livelihood.