Innovation

Jaipur Rugs has come up with an innovative idea, "Doorstep Entrepreneurship." Jaipur Rugs is a family business whose focus is to keep family values alive. The core of every family is the woman of the house. It is rightly said that “The Empowered women are powerful beyond measure and beautiful beyond description.” Jaipur Rugs empower every woman by providing her access to sustainable income opportunity at her doorstep. Jaipur Rugs employs people from the remotest part of India. Artisans living in these areas face challenges in commuting.

Jaipur Rugs is internationally recognized for its inclusive carpet value chain that links grassroots artisans with global markets. They have been featured in the book, 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.'

Jaipur Rugs has an intensive Logistics support system. Through this network, raw materials are transported to the artisan’s home. To maintain the quality of the product, the supervisor inspects looms. These supervisors ensure that there is no interruption to artisans due to a shortage of yarn or other such materials. When this initial step is completed, the rug is picked up from the artisan doorstep and delivered for the next stage of production. Weavers are paid regularly every month at their looms. This network connects 600 villages in India, which connect 40000 artisans.

"The main purpose of this idea was to empower people from the remotest places and give them the choice of their own working hours. Generally, Indian families do not allow women to go out for work. So, our system gives them an opportunity to work from home. Mothers with young children get an opportunity to weave and take care of the child simultaneously. Commuting problem of the weavers is also resolved", says Mr. Ranga.

Inspiration

Nand Kishore (N.K.) Chaudhary, the founder of Jaipur rugs, was born and bought up in a remote town in Rajasthan, India. After graduating, he worked for some time in his family business but then decided to start something he could call his own. During the market study, he realized that high-quality rug weaving was in demand. He bought two looms and installed them in his home in 1978 and quickly learned the technical aspects of weaving from local weavers. Owing to the good business practices paired with the overall business model Jaipur Rugs has grown immensely over the past 42 years. During the interview, we got to understand the ideology of the company. They believe in seeing the world through the lens of potential and growth, rather than poverty and financial gaps. The company achieves business growth by inducing growth in the community. They aim to make the artisans self-dependent and self-sufficient.

Not only does the company impact the financial wellbeing of the artisans, but it also works towards their physical health, education, and information symmetry. They arrange health camps, provide basic education, and support them to reach their dreams.

Overall impact

Jaipur rugs foundation impacting the lives of Artisans with its development model, which is a three-stepped approach

• Engage: It is the initial step to make a practical difference by identifying and mobilizing new communities and partnerships

• Develop: It involves the deeper level of intervention people benefitting from developing themselves

• Sustain: It involves the positive transformation of artisans and their families for long term

“Business problem is not a resource problem, its people problem. Jaipur Rugs invest in its people. With the introduction of technology, it has become easy to connect to weavers. With the Integration of ERP, the whole system has been connected, which is more robust," Says Mr. Yash Ranga

With the help of surveys by Govt. of India, Jaipur Rugs Foundation finds areas that are severely underdeveloped and provides extensive training to weavers in those areas. These help people get a stable income throughout the year compared to agricultural work, which depends on the season, weather, and various other factors. The weavers are extensively trained and provided a stipend even during the training times. This model has provided by JRF has drastically improved the lives of these artisans.

The foundation is helping the artisans with its Social Entrepreneurial model. The foundation's social development activities include initiatives like Artisan card, Health care, Udhyog Aadhar number, Financial inclusion, Functional literacy, and Insurance linkage. The foundation's Entrepreneurial development activities include initiative skill development and leadership development. Under the skill development, the artisans are developing new skills and training the new artisans. Leadership development has to develop the leaders, creating the ownership mindset, and introducing the value chain among the Artisans.

The 17 SDGs are deliberately interconnected; Further improving on one involves tackling problems more commonly connected with another. 5 out of the 17 SDGs are focused by the foundation for its contribution: ‘gender equality,’ ‘no poverty,’ ‘responsible consumption,’ ‘good health,’ ‘good jobs and economic growth.’ Out of these, particularly gender equality is considered more important by the Jaipur Rugs Foundation; because it is evidently proven that improving gender equality leads to eradicating poverty.

Business benefit

The Jaipur Rugs functioning is split into four completely separate operations: Jaipur Rugs Incorporated, Jaipur Rugs Foundation, and Jaipur Rugs Company. Four foundational building blocks permit Jaipur Rugs to fruitfully influence the quality and swiftly suit marketplace demands while implementing the extraordinarily complicated method of redeeming raw materials to associate an autonomous cluster of individual contractors. The synchronization of tasks across numerous permissible bodies gives Jaipur Rugs:

A. Access, but not ownership, to specific skills

B. Impact, but not authorize, over crucial exercises

C. Redistribution of funding

The different innovative measures have helped Jaipur Rugs be the largest manufacturer and exporter of Indian hand-knotted rugs by 2008, with a fiscal year revenue of USD 21.1M. It was a profitable and fast-growing company, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 38% from 2005-2008.

Jaipur Rugs is substituting the conventional representation of intermediary -owned looms to empower artisans to own their own looms. They help artisans acquire subsidies from the government, and that aid capitalizes 50 - 75% of the looms' price in some zones. With such a decentralized system, the company has adopted an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which has helped ensure and increase the supply chain's efficiency with quality control functions, communication networks, and progress record tracking. The company believes that “A business cannot run without profit and business is all about people,”

Social and environmental benefit

Jaipur Rugs has worked incredibly for the support and upliftment of weavers and marginalized communities in India. The Jaipur Rugs Foundation leverages the alliances with other NGOs that provide health care and education to the weavers. Due to their intricate job, many of the weavers suffer from eye problems, but the foundation helped almost a thousand women gain access to opticians and eyeglasses. Providing such basic necessity at the grass-root level has been one of the key areas in Jaipur rugs' working.

They have started multiple initiatives for the upliftment of women by providing them with employment and education through which they have gained independence from society's regressive mindset. Jaipur rugs have provided employment and competitive wages, because of which they have been uplifted from poverty.

As a result of this recognition of their talents, many contractors see their incomes, social standing, and capabilities multiply. Multiple employees and weavers testify that the financial and personal help gained because of Jaipur rugs has helped them start their own enterprises, thus promoting the spirit of entrepreneurship in the community.

Interview

Mr Yash Ranga, Stakeholder Engagement Partner & Sustainability Lead of Jaipur Rugs