A couple of months ago, I got an invitation to catch up with the team of a unique social organization called India Meets India. The meeting turned out like opening a pandora’s box of everyday problems that half the India suffers from. But, it wasn’t just that. The team at India Meets India wasn’t focussing on the problems alone. They were proposing solutions and already implementing them too.
Imagine a twenty five year old artisan based out of a small town called Sitapur near Lucknow who makes beautiful wooden furniture. He is passionate about his work and has been doing it since the last decade. He’s been working for a furniture shop for the last couple of years and is trying to make ends meet, somehow. He’s been paid a fixed wage which is not really enough to support his family. There are a thousand others like him, who don’t really make money from what they produce. Instead, it goes to these middlemen or shop owners who have invested in a setup and hired these artisans. If these artisans start working for NGOs instead, wouldn’t they be paid better? Wouldn’t they get their due share? But then who buys products from NGOs? Here is where India Meets India comes into picture.
Their partners are provided complete support – beginning from product selection, professional shoot of their product portfolio, finishing the product pictures, uploading products on the website, creating exclusive partner pages, providing free packaging, training the partner in packaging goods, organizing door-step pick up of the products, collecting payments and managing customer care. All these services are provided without any charge whatsoever to the partner NGO.
I got a chance to talk to the artisan from Sitapur I mentioned above. Though I wanted to head to Sitapur and meet him person, but that wasn’t possible, given the full time job and travel plans. Next time I’m in Lucknow, I will make sure I plan to meet this guy. He carves magic out of wood, I’ve heard.
India Meets India is a unique for profit social organisation which provides individuals and corporate organizations a unique opportunity to help the needy, not through charity, but through empowerment. They partner with NGOs throughout India helping the poor and have-nots of India reach the other India which has the money to buy the products made by them and appreciate the hard-work that goes into it. They are doing a great job out of it, marketing these products that need to see the light of the day. Being a sales driver platform, they are as serious about business and customers as any other corporate organization, but with a difference that they have their heart in the right place.
India Meets India has a range of products made by him and many others at very reasonable prices and you can have a look at them here. They have everything under the sun that is produced in India and these products are of great quality, at par with the usual brands. The distinguishing factor is that buying them makes someone in a far away village in India,happy and pays their bills.
There’s a by-product that India Meets India is producing while helping these artisans become part of NGOs and helping them sell their products. This by-product is a very desirable. Helping these people make money from their crafts, the organisation is doing India a greater good. There are many a dying art forms in the country which will not see the light of coming years. Imagine the Phulkari from Punjab or the Katha work from Bengal dying a slow death in the coming years – because the artisans who are making these pieces are literally starving while the likes of FabIndia and Anokhi are minting money out of their products. This, needs to be changed. It’s high time we think about it and spring into action.
