Hunarsetu is an initiative I created to promote Indian arts and crafts

India’s artisan economy sustains over 200 million livelihoods, with an estimated 7 million practicing artisans forming its backbone. Yet many  live on just $3–4 per day, with many dipping below $1 in rural areas. Worsening this, nearly 30% of artisans have abandoned their trade in recent years, unable to withstand economic shocks such as the pandemic, or competition from mass-manufactured goods.

The average artisan earns less than $4 a day, not because of a lack of skill, but because their crafts are unable to reach the modern markets. With limited digital literacy, they cannot access e-commerce platforms; instead, they are forced to rely on exploitative middlemen. Their work rarely reaches beyond local bazaars, leaving them excluded from India’s digital economy. The challenge is even more urgent from a gender and inclusion perspective: more than 50% of artisans are women and members of marginalized communities, many of whom face restrictions on mobility due to cultural and social norms. For them, the artisan economy is not only a livelihood but one of the few pathways to economic independence.

Beyond the artisans, India’s traditional art forms themselves are facing a crisis of visibility and survival. A number of Indian classical, folk and tribal art forms have been classified as endangered by the government due to limited public exposure. The rapid spread of mass-produced, factory-replicated decor has further reduced demand for authentic hand-created art. To preserve our cultural heritage, Indian art must be actively promoted.

HunarSetu aims to solve the above problems through the following methods:

MULTILINGUAL, ARTIST-FRIENDLY TECH PLATFORM

HunarSetu allows artisans unfamiliar with e-commerce to sell their products online in their own rural languages. They do not need to download and learn to use another app, but can sell products directly through Whatsapp and SMS, platforms they are more comfortable with.

Furthermore, we teamed up with ONDC (Online Network for Digital Commerce), a Government of India initiative to allow artisans we onboard get more visibility and attract more orders.

Till date we have registered 4k+ artisans and 48k+ products.

WWW.HUNARSETU.COM