Flipkart-owned Myntra’s private lifestyle brand Taavi has collaborated with about 1,300 artisans from seven Indian States to revive Indian textile craft. The fashion brand, launched recently, sells apparel for men and women with traditional Indian embroidery such as Kolkata’s kantha and Odisha’s sambalpuri ikkat. It has been working directly with local artisans and through NGOs to make traditional Indian textile and embroidery mainstream to capture India’s millennial population and broaden the customer base of the platform.
Amar Nagaram, Head – Myntra Jabong, said, “The idea behind launching Taavi was to marry the traditional but unorganised Indian textile and handicraft sector with modern fashion sensibilities. Its aim is to revive the languishing textile sector and the local artisans. Myntra will leverage its reach to take traditional Indian textile arts and crafts to a larger audience.”
The fashion retailer has also collaborated with NGO’s such as Industree Bangalore, a women empowerment organization in Karnataka, and Diya Kumari Foundation which is an outreach initiative for underprivileged women in Rajasthan to design the collections.
Currently, Myntra sells about 2300 fashion and lifestyle brands such as Nike, Arrow, Levis, Biba and Ferrari on its portal and services about 19000 pin codes. Myntra Fashion Brand (MFB) has 18 private labels which contribute to 25 percent of the overall sales. According to Nagaram, leading markets include most of Tier 1 and 2 cities.
In the next two seasons, Taavi plans to launch bujodi shawls, kutchi work, bagh print, lehariya, madhubani, chikankari and phulkari embroidery by roping in more artisans. The brand also plans to launch footwear and home category.
