Hyderabad: Ever since the Intellectual Property Rights Act had been implemented in 2004, nearly around 432 Geographical Indication (GI) tags have been registered in India and more than 1,050 applications have been filed with GI Registry. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh together have registered only 35 GIs so far. While 15 GIs are registered in Telangana, about 20 are registered in AP.

“This number can be a good lead to begin and promote local entrepreneurs and women startups. Two more GIs are still under process. Warangal’s chillies (locally called as chapata) and Hyderabad’s lac bangles are yet to be registered,” said Subhajit Saha, a GI agent on record for these two applications.

He is also Head of Legal & IPR at Resolute Group and founder of the Intellectual Property Rights Awareness Society (IPRAS). On the occasion of World Intellectual Property Rights Day, he believes that there is no better time than today for women entrepreneurs to explore GIs and build business models.

“World IPR day is celebrated every year on 26 April. This year, the theme is Women and IP with ‘can do’ attitude of women inventors, creators and entrepreneurs around the world and their ground-breaking work. Their work does not resonate well with statistics as only 10 per cent women are represented in current innovations and IPs world over,” Saha informed.

While patents and designs might need a lot of research and time, the best IP would be to work on is the Geographical Indications. With the recent soft launch of Government of India‘s of indiahandmade.com web portal the awareness on Indian handicrafts will raise immensely among customers and the stakeholders.

“Globally, the women are only contributing 16 per cent to IP and innovations. There is huge gender parity as inventorship needs to be acknowledged for doing inventions in labs and recorded for this numbers to rise. In the fields like interior design, fashion design, jewellery design and digital content, women can contribute immensely to increase this percentage,” Saha said.

He suggests naming a handicraft, handmade goods, textile and food stuff, and finding them in the GI list. Women entrepreneurs can work with the weavers and artisans to build a label, corporate gifting solutions, building brand, add new designs , digital marketing and getting into fusion products. There is an immense need to bridge the rural-urban divide by taking up GIs as a business.

The GI is that aspect of industrial property which refers to the geographical indication referring to a country or to a place situated therein as being the country or place of origin of that product. Typically, such a name conveys an assurance of quality and distinctiveness which is essentially attributable to the fact of its origin in that defined geographical locality.