Innovation

Lal10 is a B2B venture — run by Maneet Gohil, 29, Sanchit Govil, 30, and Albin Jose, 27 — attempting to connect India's handloom handiwork areas with worldwide retailers of different sorts, searching for certifiable and quality handcrafted items. The threesome began Lal10 in 2015, working initially out of their loft room in Bengaluru.

Lal10 has a team of 28 currently working with 1,200 artisans across Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Manipur, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana. In every one of these states, they have a go-to person in the weaving clusters or craftsman groups with whom they work. They consider this individual the 'Cluster Champion.'

At first, Lal10 furnished every one of these Cluster Champions with a ₹6,000 WhatsApp-empowered cell phone through which they'd impart and arrange orders. This aided for some time, with Lal10's income expanding five-fold. Yet, this got dubious about supporting. The artisans wouldn't merely believe a WhatsApp message affirming a request. They'd need more affirmation than that — they'd need in any event a voice.

In 2018, Lal10 discovered — no 24x7 power, however modest and reasonable versatile information, with application proficiency stretching out to any semblance of TikTok and PUBG — that a dashboard, full with a portable application, is the ideal approach to enhance and smooth out their business.

They immediately outsourced constructing a Client Relationship Management (CRM), and the application was installed into the Cluster Champion's smartphones, and all divisions inside Lal10's groups began working through the dashboard.

The business group would be alarmed when they got a request on a site like Alibaba; they'd at that point comprehend their amount and plan particulars, just as spending plan and cutoff time; the planning group would then be cautioned in the event of any explicitness all together, with Cluster Champion accepting a ping.

Suppose the weavers have additional stock that they've quite recently supplied. In that case, they can log it onto the CRM, and Lal10 can overcome any barrier flexibly and request much further — which means weavers don't need to stand by to go to the following display in a distant city or trust that a prominent originator will return to them with next season's requests.

Inspiration

Inspiration is all around us, and “The simple everyday experiences become the doorway to new thoughts and inspirations.” -- E.A. Bucchianeri

“I with my co-founders traveled extensively to a lot of such states, where we found a lot of common problems which these communities face today in terms of how they can uplift their craft, have better market accessibility in terms of having such a supply chain which can fetch them better prices and provide them with the good market to sell their product. That was something we found as a common missing link. That’s how this vision started of connecting such artisans and communities to a lot of buyers in India and globally,” says Sanchit Govil, co-founder of Lal10, a Noida based startup that derived its name from the Hindi word for ‘Lantern’ Organization. Apart from their future-forward idea in the handicraft industry, what we found as a very novel but interesting approach is the team of designers at Lal10 who work with the craftsman and artisans to create new contemporary designs without hampering the authenticity of the art. And not just artisans, they have a team of poets, photographers, engineers, social workers who are passionate about reviving the traditional creative artforms of India.

Sanchit Govil was brought up in a family where he has closely watched and inherited the traits of business and social services from his father, who is dutifully running the business for the past 30 years. His passion for the business of his own and inspiration drawn from his father inspired him a lot. While exploring new places, cuisines, cultures and meeting new people, Sanchit and the other co-founder were amazed to see the huge market potential for these handicraft products in international and domestic markets. But due to intermediaries' involvement, the unstructured market prices, and the customers being fooled by the name, handicraft goods were the major challenges they saw in the market.

After observing and analyzing all the constraints, the foundation of Lal10, social entrepreneurship, was laid. Their vision is to take out the middle man, and the artisans should be awarded the price they deserve. In addition to that, they also focused on nurturing and preserving the artisan's unique and exquisite talents, which can create an impact and help the community, and at the same time showcase and sell their crafts in different parts of the world where people have an essence for handicrafts products. The idea and their commitment were so revolutionary that Lal10 got into the limelight in no time.

Overall impact

Lal10 has been instrumental in bringing about a significant impact on the way talented artisans run businesses. It has provided a good platform to connect the genuine, authentic buyers and the artisans, thus providing a reasonably good price for the products so handcrafted.

Earlier artisans were getting exploited in the hands of the middlemen who bought the products at lower rates and sold them at a higher margin, thus leading to lower profits margins for the creators of such amazing handicrafts, but with Lal10 coming into the picture, not just the price lost in the transactions with intermediaries have reduced. Still, the efforts being wasted in such a long trail of transfer have reduced.

Lal10 aims to provide a sustainable business model and provide a sustainable livelihood for the artisan’s family. Because of this, they have focused on building technology to streamline business operations, i.e., a platform whereby millions of artisans interact, thus creating a seamless experience. This provides for a wider reach to the artisan's work. For instance, a person sitting in Australia can access genuine artwork by an artisan in Rajasthan while providing a good margin to the maker. Lal10 strives to provide efficiency in the supply chain operations from end to end. This has led to a reduction in the artisans' challenges in finding the right partners to collaborate with for selling their products. Lal 10 has helped the artisans make their products more marketable.

Along with that, Lal 10 has constantly been providing artisans with opportunities to upskill themselves and thus setting self-learning and development goals in the process. Artisans are thus currently more equipped with skills like working capital management, inventory management, etc. These skills help them get more authority over their own products and manage their inventory system, thus making them micro-entrepreneurs in the process. Lal10 thus acts on the social entrepreneurship model. In all this, Lal 10 has made sure there is no interference in the traditional craft technique, giving artisans freedom of choice for making contemporary designs and likes.

Lal10 aims to grow and take it global, whereby more artisans can be onboarded. Lal 10 aims to create an Alibaba for Indian handicrafts.

Business benefit

Lal10 has been exceptionally glowing in catering to artisans' needs by providing a place to sell their products and provide them justice for their products manufactured. The foundational thought and ideology of Lal10 are to help out artisans and promote their talent worldwide. Given the present scenario, the artisans are being exploited and not given their products' justified price. Lal10 has successfully generated livelihood for these artisans and helped them sell their products worldwide and provide them the deserving price for their products. Lal10 has laid down many sustainable practices that have simplified the supply chain, making it easy for the artisans and the customers to purchase the products at better prices, enabling both the artisans and the consumers to maximize their satisfaction level. Lal10 is playing a crucial role in sustaining the business and families involved in the sector. To promote talent, Lal10 has been working on their own design line and ensuring efficient marketability of the artisans' designs by focusing on small craftworkers and artisans. Because of the Lal10 founders' noble idea, the company is focused on selling the local products manufactured in villages/cities/states by artisans across the globe by maintaining the originality and essence of the product.

Due to COVID19, every company and sector were affected in the economy, so was Lal10 to some extent due to the disruption of the supply chain worldwide. Lal10 took this pandemic to improve their efficiency and strengthen their internal management system, which will help the artisans and their families sustain themselves in difficult and unprecedented times. COVID19 has enabled the involvement of digital channels and transactions to a greater extent. Technology will play an important role by channelizing and promoting the artisans' work in a right-forward direction. Lal10’s artistic sales and marketing team focus on building a strong relationship among the retailers, customers, and artisans. Lal10’s vision to build a base of 1 million artisans and collaborating with artisans and customers worldwide, and building a platform that would enable the artisans to interact worldwide and sell their markets in the relevant market is working in full swing and making & sustaining the lives of the artisans and craftworkers positively.

Social and environmental benefit

Apart from providing equal opportunities of work to these artisans and bringing about a positive light into their lives by eliminating intermediaries, one of the other indirect impacts that Lal10 has made is in the lives of rural women who are part of these artisan communities by providing them with the source of livelihood and decent work opportunities. Hence, the women of the community feel more empowered. The organization has brought significant changes into the lives of some women who are now their Cluster Champions who work with the other community member as micro-entrepreneurs and manage a small part of the business for Lal10.

They are also trying to make the rural artisan community more technology-friendly; the company is about to launch the mobile application for artisans to listed down and directly have a hold of their products and have an end to end visibility of their craft. This would help the community feel more in the authority of their work, making them feel more empowered.

The company plans to bring at least a million artisans on the platform in the coming few years who would be able to use the opportunity and sell their products to a similar number of buyers. They also look forward to replicating the model to other countries like Africa and work with the artist communities as part of their plans.

Interview

Sanchit Govil, Co-founder