Karnataka to come up with e-commerce website and app for Ilkal, Silk, Udupi

Team Udayavani, Mar 14, 2021, 10:20 AM IST

Bengaluru: The Department of Textiles and Handlooms is coming up with its own e-commerce website and mobile app for people to place orders for sarees that are unique to Karnataka.

With 54,000 handlooms and 1.4 lakh power loom weavers in Karnataka, mostly concentrated in Belagavi, Bagalkot, Chitradurga, Vijayapura, Bengaluru Rural, and Ramanagara districts, Mysuru silk, Ilkal, Molakalmuru, Udupi, Guledghad and Navalgund sarees have got their Geographical Indications (GI) tag.

Despite the sarees being of good quality, having a brand value, and GI indications, the middlemen make money out of it rather than the weavers.

As per reports, the Department is planning to develop an e-commerce platform to address the issue.

Reports state that a few weavers who were financially good tried selling their products on Amazon and other big e-commerce websites but they didn’t garner much response.

Therefore the department is developing an in-house website and mobile application which allows weavers to upload pictures of their sarees and other products directly. This app will work similarly to other e-commerce websites.

Once a customer places an order, a message is sent directly to the weavers who dispatches the saree to the customer’s doorstep. This move is aimed at benefitting both the weavers and the customers, as the weavers can sell without paying any commission and the customers can avail the product at a lower price.

Market surveys will be conducted by the department along with collecting initial data of weavers and working on delivery partners.

The government also plans on opening big showrooms for these products in other cities including Chennai, Mumbai and, Hyderabad.

The sources informed that the sarees can be shipped abroad if everything goes as planned.

It is important to note that Textiles Minister Shrimanth Patil had proposed to procure six lakh sarees from weavers, at prices ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 600 per saree and gift to three lakh Covid warriors. An estimated cost of Rs 36 crore was sent to the Finance Department which was rejected twice, as per reports.