Luxury brand Jaipur Rugs sparks social revolution in 600 villages

They do take out time out to talk about how their lives have been transformed: they are able to send their daughters to school, make decisions in a male-dominated society, and receive a salary at the end of the month, a matter of pride. Shanti, a ‘bunkar sakhi’ (a ‘weaver’s friend’ who supervises the work done by women weavers in her units) tells me, “Ab humme lagta hai ke hum aur hamari beityaan kuch bhi achieve kar sakti hain.”  Each weaver earns anywhere Rs 20,000 and more per month, depending on the amount of work they put in.

Another weaver in the same village, a solitary worker, is weaving a Manchaha or an Artisans Original rug in which they are allowed to take their creative decisions, drawing from their rustic surroundings for patterns, motifs and colours. The leftover yarn is weaved using the labour-intensive hand-knotting technique in which the weavers tie individual knots. One of the Manchahas, the Ujjwal area rug weaved by Dhafali Devi, won a bronze at the European Product Design Awards in Germany, in 2018.

Rangeeli Deewar by Tahira - an Artisans Original

Back in the company headquarters in Jaipur, Chaudhary tells me, “Manchaha brings a fresh perspective to the area rug design as it is inspired by the weavers, their culture and their relationships with nature, their village, their animals and their family.”

In the world of Indian luxury, Chaudhary is a legend for having defied every rule in the book, flouted every social norm to create an Indian company with a global footprint. He hails from a conservative Jain family but gave his ancestors’ business a miss. He faced social censure for working with artisans who came from backward communities in a state known for its rigid caste biases.

“The pressures were several,” Chaudhary says unassumingly, his perennial smile not leaving his face. “But then you have to do what you believe in. I believe there should be a purpose to the business you do; it should be sustainable and inclusive. If it leverages our strength as a culture, it will bring about change on the ground level.”

He also faced family pressure because his first three children were daughters. Back then, a dispirited Chaudhary turned to his British friend, art historian Ilay Cooper for advice. Cooper, who continues to close, not just advised him to offer his daughters the best opportunities possible, but also guided him to set up his first two-loom weaving unit in a weavers’ home. “The rug business was unorganised and dominated by middlemen. Artisans rarely got money for the work they did,” remembers Chaudhary. “We decided to bypass the middlemen and export the rugs after we received a decent sized order.”

Twenty-five years old then, Chaudhary borrowed Rs 2,000 from his father (despite family disapproval) to purchase the looms and an old bicycle. “I discovered that some of the most beautiful rugs were made by those who did not enjoy basic rights,” he rues. Over the years he moved to Gujarat to teach tribals how to weave, before heading back home, to Rajasthan. Not only did Jaipur Rugs wipe out influential middlemen, but they also empowered women weavers and other artisans, creating doorstep entrepreneurship in the bargain.

The challenge in those early days was to convince clients that Indian could make quality rugs, and later, that they did not use child labour.  The company’s headquarters displays a board stating this crucial fact.

Today, two of his daughters are part of the growing business. While Kavita Chaudhary heads the design department, his eldest born, Asha, headlines Jaipur Living Inc, their vertical in the US, while his son Yogesh is a Director in the company. Kavita is keen on modernising the designs. “While even today classics inspired by Arabic designs are in demand, our designs today could be more geometric or abstract. We take inspiration from art movements, art deco and from design trends globally,” she says. The company has collaborated with several designers such as Gauri Khan, Jennifer Adams Design Group in the US and Cuban born American designer Lourdes Sanchez to create special collections that sell at a premium.

Kras Free Verse By Kavita

At the Jaipur Rugs headquarters, designers create patterns on their computer, which are then printed on large sheets and sent to the artisans, to be translated into hand-knotted and hand-tufted wonders. However, the artisans are at the core of the creative decisions taken at the company. “Sometimes, our artisans have felt that our colour palette is boring and we have added colour,” laughs Kavita, referring to Rajasthan’s love for vibrant colours. 

Jaipur Living Inc, the US arm run by Asha Chaudhary, retails in the lucrative US market for which rugs are specially designed and weaved, keeping the American aesthetics in mind. Yogesh Chaudhary, the youngest of the sibling, has helped launch the brand ‘Jaipur Rug’ in the Indian market, turning the B2B business into a B2C one, though the former category still dominates sales. “In a bid to cater to the Indian market, which has expanded rapidly and is now mature enough to understand hand-weaved luxury, we decided to launch the India retail arm under our brand name,” says Chaudhary.

Jaipur Rugs has set up three expansive stores in Jaipur, Delhi and the most recent one, in Mumbai, a 4000 sq.ft. industrial-style space in a defunct textile mill in the innards of Lower Parel. The company also set up the Jaipur Rugs Foundation in 2004 to train new artisans and upgrade the skills of existing weavers.

The wool and silk carpets Jaipur Rugs’ artisans weave are intricate works of art or collages of beautiful colours and in the international market can be priced up to a staggering $10,000 each. “The knot quality determines the price. The finer and tighter the knots, the higher the value,” says Chaudhary. There are 82 processes in carpet making, from buying the raw materials to final delivery. The biggest carpet the weavers have made is a 30x40ft piece with 14 million knots, each individually tied; the most expensive is the one sold to the royal family of Saudi Arabia.

While Jaipur Rugs faces severe competition from machine-made varieties, Chaudhary is confident that there will exist a niche for hand-made beauties. “It takes hundreds of man-hours to design and produce a rug. But for a machine, copying that design and mass producing it takes just a few days. The loss of opportunity and market for the weaver is huge. The challenge lies in educating the customer about the value of the handmade carpet industry.”

His weavers take anywhere between 15 to 25 days to weave one rug. At the rate of one lakh rugs a year, we can only guess the number of man-hours it takes to keep this craft alive. “The millennial generation loves conscious luxury products and likes to connect with the weavers. They visit the villages, listen to the weavers’ stories, eat in their homes. That is what makes the experience so luxurious,” he adds.