The aggregator advantage: Empowering rural India against all odds

ALMOST EVERY HOME in Madhya Pradesh’s Maheshwar, famous for Maheshwari silk-cotton sarees, has a loom. Most inhabitants of this town, around 90 km from Indore, make a living weaving single-colour sarees with vibrant borders and the traditional design of five stripes that run across the length of the garment. But 45-year-old Maheshwari weaver Mamta Chaudhry chooses to be different. Calling herself a ‘designer’ the single mother plays around with out-of-the-box designs in a bid to make her products more contemporary. And it is paying her rich dividends. While most weavers in Maheshwar make ₹8,500-10,000 a month, Chaudhry earns anywhere between ₹25,000 and ₹30,000.

On a humid Friday afternoon, at her six-loom facility in a dusty lane on the banks of the Narmada, Chaudhry — along with her all-women team of 11 weavers — is busy getting an inventory of sarees and dupattas that would be listed on Karghewale, a Maheshwar-based incubator and aggregator platform for weavers. “Karghewale has helped me sell my products to buyers beyond Maheshwar,” she says.

Nearly 500 km away in Nagpur, Delhi-based Racknsell is helping a small hardware store sell to the a big corporate based in Mumbai. The B2B e-commerce company, which has 4,000-plus suppliers on board — mostly small- and medium-sized companies — purchases office essentials such as hand trolleys, stationery, wiring hardware, etc., and then sells them to corporates.

Karghewale and RacknSell are part of a niche community popularly known as aggregators — entities that consolidate goods or services from multiple suppliers and distribute them to a larger market. The concept is not new, but women-led ones such as Karghewale, 2323Designs, RacknSell, Aftertaste, and Tisser India have a unique USP. These businesses are built around goods such as handloom and handicrafts, food products, utilities and stationery sourced from rural women artisans and farmers. The goal is not just to sell or market the product, but also to empower the women making them.

The handicrafts industry in India is dominated by female artisans (56%), according to a Press Information Bureau release from 2022. The country has 744 handicrafts clusters employing nearly 212,000 artisans and offering over 35,000 products, according to research conducted by Aspire For Her, a community-driven organisation focussed on increasing women’s participation in the workforce.

“Since artisans are distributed across the country, it is virtually impossible to reach them individually. Hence this aggregator model is very efficient and effective,” says Madhura DasGupta Sinha, founder and CEO, Aspire For Her. In fact, nearly 20% of the unincorporated, non-agricultural enterprises are owned by women, says Aspire For Her.

“With digital access increasing in rural areas, global markets opening up, and the government’s thrust on rural entrepreneurship, this is the model we need to work on,” says Madan Padaki, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the Global Alliance For Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME).

Closing the gap

Founded in 2021 by Nivedita Rai and Sourodip Ghosh, Karghewale acts as an intermediary between artisans and big businesses. The company helps women-led collectives — across Maheshwar, Gujarat’s Kutch, and West Bengal — tap into the rising demand for handcrafted products through market and credit linkages, digital inclusion, mentorship and hands-on guidance.

“We act as an ecosystem enabler,” says Rai. “We run cohort-based models. They go through the three-year incubation period, after which they can work with us, or choose independent clients... Our cohort of 31 entrepreneurs has seen a 350% increase in income since 2021. But the irony is that out of the 31, only two are women-led businesses,” she says.

While Karghewale focusses on nurturing women-led collectives and supporting artisans through mentorship, market linkages, and financial inclusion, 2323Designs operates with a more grassroots approach by connecting individual artisans with buyers directly, though their business model is still evolving.

“We began as a side hustle, with one mission — to generate regular livelihood opportunities for artisans through strong market linkages,” says Sonali Pal, co-founder, 2323Designs. “We are not middlemen; we are aggregators. Instead of negotiating with artisans, we focus on sensitising our buyers, helping them understand why handcrafted products cost more and take longer to produce.”

With 170-plus sellers on board — 90% of them being women — 2323Designs has built a network largely composed of women entrepreneurs. In fact, most of the sellers are social enterprises. Besides frequenting fairs, the team reaches out to regional NGOs to find artisans. One such connection led them to a social organisation in Bengal, which introduced them to a large artisan cluster in the state. “One of our most impactful orders was from [an international lifestyle brand] West Elm — 10,000 pieces of handcrafted grass placemats, involving an entire village. For six months, around 70 women weaved placemats to fulfil the order. Around 80% of the order value was transferred directly to the artisans in advance,” says Pal. The company recently executed an order of Kashmiri hand-embroidered cushions for Jaypore, the domestic lifestyle brand of the Aditya Birla Group .

“Our margins are anywhere between 15-25% depending on a particular order. Every project we take on prioritises financial accessibility for artisans, ensuring they receive timely payments and sustainable income. For us, it has always been people first. That’s why our core mandate is simple — People, Planet, Partnerships,” says Pal.

Meanwhile, RacknSell, launched in 2017, has over 100,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) and more than 40 categories. The company, which also works with authorised distributors such as Jaquar (for plumbing) and Havells (for electricals), earns a mark-up on every product sold. “We broke even in 2023,” says founder Seema Gupta, who worked at supply chain units of different MNCs before donning the hat of an entrepreneur. “But our unit economics was positive from Day One.”

Karghewale, meanwhile, sells to private labels, boutique owners and international brands, which then do value addition and sell to their clients. “When we do onward selling, we add a 30-35% aggregator margin,” says Rai. “We did ₹91 lakh in sales in FY24 and are looking at ₹1 crore in FY25.” The artisans get upfront advance payment and market feedback. Plus, there’s a design mentor who works with artisans according to the feedback.

“There are artisans who have gone from one loom to five,” says Rai. “Currently, there are 2% people in the craft ecosystem whom we can call entrepreneurs... our target is to increase the number to 20%. Only then, there will be more parity and less distinction in the pay bands of people.”

According to Ajaita Shah , founder & CEO of Frontier Markets, a social commerce rural supply-chain platform manned by rural women (sahelis), the access gap can only be fulfilled if one understands how to truly localise the market. “In a village, a person should not have to walk more than 15 minutes, or 500 metres, to get everything they need… But the only way you would understand what those things would be is if there are women at the centre using technology and asking the right questions.”

Frontier Markets focusses on meeting the right social innovators, judging their quality of products, conducting tests to see whether or not the products are relevant, and evaluating whether there is a value proposition. The company is looking to go from 1 million to 100 million sahelis in less than five years. “We help corporates identify the right customer base. It’s an impact story that both India Inc. and the government need. In fact, states are our biggest partners. We recently signed an MoU with the Andhra Pradesh government, and we already have those in place with Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan governments.”

It’s not restricted to India. “Countries, including Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Myanmar, want to replicate what we do,” adds Shah.

Challenges galore

One of the biggest challenges is scaling up these businesses. Lack of digital literacy, limited access to global markets, and the absence of proper infrastructure often create problems.

“The dispersed nature of the value chain, from yarn to handloom weavers, to tailors and hand embroidery artisans, spread across the country, makes for a logistical challenge. The introduction of GST further increases complexity as raw materials and goods are moved from one state to another. Production tracking and maintaining quality standards in different locations are also key issues,” says Sumita Ghose, founder-director of artisans’ collective Rangsutra Crafts India.

Raising funds is another huge challenge. While angel investments of around ₹50,000-1 lakh are available, venture capitalists are less likely to invest in the sector. Large-scale funds typically flow into microfinance institutions (MFIs), leaving a funding gap for small-scale businesses.

“A small-scale handloom weaver needs to buy yarn, rent a loom. The average interest charged on micro-credit at the rural level is 20-22%. So, access to working capital is a big issue,” says Divya Sampath, venture capital investor (AWE Funds) and innovation advisor, Aspire For Her. She cites the example of Jyoti (name changed) who runs a small kirana store and an attached flour mill in a village in Andhra Pradesh. Four villages in the surrounding area bring their millets, wheat and other products, and she grinds them for a price. During the harvest season, she keeps it closed every alternate day for her employees and herself to work in the fields. She gets a guaranteed ₹400-500 for working seven hours in the field, against the uncertainty of products being sold at the store.

“In rural areas, the line between entrepreneurs and wage earners is very thin, and people cross back and forth over it regularly,” says Sampath. “Moreover, more often than not, women are seen as incapable of managing businesses, a bias reinforced by family and community expectations.”

Shah of Frontier Markets says that the challenges are around: i) how active the platform is; ii) how consistent the job opportunity will be; and iii) how much these micro entrepreneurs are earning to make it a sustainable proposition for the long term. “Identifying the right talent, deciding the right product-market fit, training them, building market opportunity and creating consistency are important… Our learning is that one needs to be ‘multi-service’. Otherwise, there won’t be enough money in it for the women to earn, especially as a full-time job,” she explains.

Padaki of GAME suggests a fund of funds by the government and a digital co-operative that will help integrate multiple aggregators under a common platform will help. “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. You have to be local as far as your supplies are concerned, but to command a better market you have to go global,” he says.

Women-led aggregators are empowering artisans, fostering entrepreneurship, and bridging gaps in the market, creating sustainable livelihoods. As Ghose of Rangsutra puts it, “Women need to show the world that there are ways of doing business that can benefit all along the value chain they work in, and not just the select few at the top. This will make for a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient economy and society.”