This Bengaluru-based startup using AI, IoT to increase silk farmers' income

Please tell us the Importance of the handloom / textile sector to our economy.

The handloom sector is important to the Indian economy for a variety of reasons, including job creation in rural areas and the transmission of India's rich cultural legacy to other nations. The Indian textile and clothing sector is immensely diverse, with items ranging from traditional handloom, handicrafts, wool, and silk products to the organized textile industry in India. Handlooms in India exemplify the country's cultural richness and display the craftsmanship of weavers around the world.

Nowhere else in the world can you find such a broad range of weaving skills in one nation. Weavers in India have always had a lot of negotiating power. With the industrial revolution progressively diminishing their negotiating power, weavers grew economically behind, and the view of handlooms evolved from one of a cultural endeavour that gave high returns to one that was barely viable. Handlooms, as opposed to power looms, are ingrained in the social fabric of the country.

Therefore, the handloom sector is critical to the development of India's rural economy. Even today, the rural population of India, primarily women, rely heavily on the handloom industry after agriculture, which takes little capital and little technical skills and provides a consistent source of income. Since independence, many government measures have attempted to revitalize the Indian handloom business. However, the majority of these measures have had mixed results. The handloom sector received a much-needed boost from three factors: the e-commerce boom, government assistance and programs such as 'Make in India,' and, most crucially, changing customer preferences and their desire to purchase distinctive textiles and patterns.

What sort of technologies are you using to bring standardization in the quality of yarns?

The lockdown measures implemented during the first wave of the pandemic decimated sericulture growers, due to plummeting prices and demand for cocoons. Farmers who had to travel up to 300 kilometers everyday to marketplaces to sell their cocoons were hampered even more by a shortage of transportation. While overcoming transportation obstacles, silk growers encountered issues such as exploitation from middlemen and being underpaid under the guise of low-quality cocoons.

Our application - ReshaMandi, is a 360-degree solution that involves all players in the silk sector, including farmers, weavers, reelers, and merchants, by allowing them to buy and sell their output on this platform. We offer IoT devices for collecting data on soil temperature and moisture content, as well as monitoring elements like sunlight, air quality, humidity, and temperature and also help stakeholders with AI-led technology to grade the quality of cocoons by employing computer vision, where the farmer simply needs to scan his produce by hovering the mobile over it (similar to a Google lens) to get the renditta of cocoons. The company offers a one-stop vernacular digital platform in the form of a mobile app for stakeholders to stay up to date on what's going on in the silk industry, macro advisories, khata ledgers, market linkages, community development, Mandi rates, and purchasing equipment. It also provides market linkages for both input procurement in the form of cocoons and selling output in the form of yarns. We have also partnered with fintech companies to deliver one-click loan disbursements via the ReshaMandi mobile app.

Furthermore, we chose to empower and educate our farmers with an AI-led cocoon grading tool based on the world-renowned renditta test. The devices evaluate the quality of cocoons using computer vision and data analytics, which extracts numerous aspects from the data set, i.e. the photos of cocoons, and then generates renditta of cocoons based on those features. As a result of the uniformity of this procedure, farmers are more informed and are less likely to be exploited. By these interventions we are enabling farmers to increase outputs, produce high-quality and get worthy financial returns.

What are the initiatives ReshaMandi is taking to ensure stability and transparency in the traditional weaving industry?

The textile industry is highly unorganized with problems like price fluctuations, absence of proper markets, lack of proper logistics, no definitive advisory, minimal quality testing and no transparency in the processes. Hence, ReshaMandi works as a grassroots-level technology enabler, digitizing the entire supply chain, working directly with farmers, reelers, fabric weavers and retailers, enabling them to get the best price for their produce, reducing the time to market, and making sure that they are supplied with the best raw materials and testing kits. We aim to completely eliminate the uncertainties of the process presenting a completely transparent process to the entire value chain.

With our growing network, we are facilitating a smooth procurement of natural fibers for reelers which in turn helps weavers acquire quality assured yarns, thereby providing market linkages at every stage of the process. The transparency guaranteed under this process allows for fair pricing and better output, due to which reelers and weavers have been able to increase their earnings.

What has been ReshaMandi's strategic approach with retailers?

A large number of retailers i.e, more than 80 per cent of them rely on wholesalers and traders to procure fabrics. Most of the SME retailers lack the business development experience to discover weaving clusters. They prefer to settle for traders in close proximity to procure inputs. As a result, the final price of the garments rises and is passed onto consumers. For instance, an end consumer who has the capacity to buy pure silk often shifts to artificial silk because of the hiked price in the end-product. Data-led backward integration of the supply chain enables the retailer to connect with multiple weavers in multiple textiles at one time, check inventory and capacity of weavers and place orders with multiple weavers making sure he has a constant flow of merchandise.

• Move towards just-in-time (JIT) procurement practices: The retailer gets the option to choose and get merchandise exactly when he has demanded and not have to overstock when not required.

• Expanding supplier base: The retailer is no longer restricted to specific weavers. He can work with new designs and new weavers, having a bigger catalog to offer his consumers.

• Lower cost of procurement: Given the predictability of supply and assurance of quality, retailers can procure at lower costs and potentially pass some of the benefits to the end consumers.

• Customization of design on the basis of customer base: Retailers are able to customize products according to their clientele's sensibility, colour, and design preferences and place orders with weavers accordingly.

• Retailers are able to maintain the quality of their products, as the samples are pre-approved while placing orders.

Elaborate more on ReshaMandi's foray into the D2C sector, through e-commerce launch of ReshaWeaves?

We are empowering all parties involved, farmers, reelers, and weavers, through our D2C platform, ReshaWeaves, by positively affecting their business. So entering into the D2C sector was an obvious next step in our business expansion strategy, and the next step in our vision to connect the farm to fashion.

We aim at resurrecting the age-old tradition of weaving and numerous vintage handlooms, as well as helping artists and craftsmen. Our in-house design studio team assists weavers in designing items that are in line with current fashion trends by giving them knowledge on current fashion trends thereby ensuring saleability for the weavers' products and profits for weavers.

We've effectively established a digital arena, a one-stop purchasing platform for all natural-fiber sarees, as well as making exquisite drapes accessible to the common woman and man at an affordable price. We are curating a collection of high-quality drapes, emanating from the nook and corner of our country and creating sarees like Banarasi, Dharmavaram, Bhagalpuri, Maheshwari to name a few.

Please elaborate more on ReshaMandi's fintech arm - ReshaMudra and how will it help their stakeholders and how will it provide financial assistance to them?

ReshaMandi's fintech arm, ReshaMudra, is meant to assist all industry stakeholders, beginning with farmers, reelers, weavers, and retailers by providing them with working capital. This will help in promoting entrepreneurship, encouraging the cultural art, helping them realize their dreams, and more. We intend to become the world's "Digital Textile-only bank" for all players in the natural fiber sector. The loan book of ReshaMudra aims to achieve $1 billion in the next three years.