The Initiative

Karghewale works with 150 young weaver entrepreneurs, most of whom are graduates of WomenWeave’s The Handloom School, across thirteen states of Arunanchal Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha, and Telangana. Our mission is to empower the creators of our textiles, this talented community of young and aspiring weaver entrepreneurs, so that they can build robust businesses. What differentiates us is the belief that weavers are equal partners in the business, not mere wage workers who will weave the said design and be paid per meter wages. We believe in the agency of artisans to transcend impediments in traditional value chains to co-create, manage business and sell the final products directly to the end consumer.

The Brand

The idea of a Karghewale brand was simple in its approach. Individually, our weaver partners are talented young artisans with entrepreneurial dreams. But, together, they are stronger. Together, they have a face. Together, they can leave an indelible mark on the landscape of sustainable fashion. The Karghewale brand, thus, brings our young artisan entrepreneurs from all over India under a single identity. This gives them the leverage to circumvent the age-old impediments of commission agents in the value chain, and reach out to national and international markets directly.

The Karghewale line encapsulates all such products that were not only woven by our young artisan partners by designed by them as well. The weaving happens at their own individual home workshops, and it is the weavers themselves who manage and bear the entire cost of the production, from purchase of raw materials to finishing of products. Every “Karghewale” product, thus, narrates a story – a “coming-of-age” story, where an artisan dreams of overcoming neatly stacked odds to realise their potential as proud ambassadors of the Indian handloom weaving tradition. Quite fittingly, all Karghewale-branded products are priced by the artisans themselves. With Karghewale, our artisans truly take on the mantle of the maker, and not merely weavers.