Roshni: Lighting up the world of Indian weavers

For nearly a decade, Sunita Bali has worked as a design consultant with the Ministry of Textiles. The enterprising woman was allotted Himachal Pradesh and asked to provide design inputs to local weavers. She started working with remote villagers because of her role at the ministry of textiles but soon put her heart and soul into creating a brand that would help her go the extra mile!

Sunita started a brand called Roshni with the hope to help the weavers that she worked with. She explains that Roshni was the name of a weaver from the first group of remote villagers that she helped. The design-consultant-turned-entrepreneur was very inspired by the hard work that they put in and the joy that they did it with. She also recalls how difficult it was to reach the homes for weavers in these remote villages. The lack of proper roads and bridges meant that they journeyed for over an hour just to reach them. But that didn’t stop Sunita. She soldiered forward and did whatever she could to help the remote villagers.

Although there are many weavers, Sunita works closely with 50 of them from remote villages. The brand mostly deals with woolen products and now also silk thanks to blended yarn. They have many products with beautiful handwork such as zardozi, and they even sell elegant picture frames crafted with brocade silk.

When it came to woolen goods, the weavers were initially making only shawls and stoles. But Sunita taught them to make ponchos, jackets and many more products that would help them diversify and appeal to new markets. Thanks to Sunita’s inputs, Roshni deals not only with apparel but also handcrafted home goods and gift items.

The brand started off by selling products offline at exhibitions and even supplied woven goods to boutiques. But with time, Sunita realised that the weavers needed a marketing platform to promote their handcrafted products to the world. In her search to achieve this, she believed Amazon would be a good place to launch!

Sunita really feels a sense of achievement ever since she launched her brand on Amazon. The woven products are being marketed well and they have been able to sell many products as a brand. The entrepreneur is very happy and thankful to Amazon for what Roshni has been able to achieve through their e-commerce platform. Roshni has greater visibility in the market and has seen a month-on-month increase in sales with a boom during Diwali! She is amazed at Amazon’s reach, adding that she gets orders from parts of India that she has never even heard of. Sunita is truly thankful to Amazon Karigar for helping her connect weavers and their products with customers from across the country.

Sunita adds that online marketing with Amazon Karigar has definitely increased sales. The brand benefits from individual purchases as well as bulk orders. She also appreciates Amazon Karigar for showcasing authentic handmade products from across the country. Thanks to Amazon’s timely delivery and exchange services, customers are more comfortable and willing to purchase products. This in turn, has helped Roshni and other such businesses benefit from increased sales.

Online marketing has eliminated the middleman and helps the business greatly. Sunita feels very happy when a sale is made on Amazon because the money is reaching the weavers of remote villages that she wishes to empower through Roshni. Roshni recently launched 30 more items that are being carefully catalogued.

Sunita had a pleasant experience when she enrolled her brand with Amazon. She mentions that the process wasn’t difficult and she got all the help she needed. There were people from the product platform who even assisted her with the paperwork.

Sunita is looking forward to Roshni’s products being pushed through Amazon to help the wonderful weavers in the remote villages of our country. She hopes that the world truly sees the difference each sale makes to the lives of the weavers and their standard of living. All we can say is that Roshni is certainly the perfect name for this brand because it’s lighting up the lives of weavers in remote villages.