|
How a man who learnt to weave with two looms
in his compound in a small Rajasthan town
built a country-wide network of 40,000
artisans in 10 states to build India’s
largest hand-knotted carpets company. Born
and brought up in a small town in India,
Churu, it was his grit and determination
that made Mr. Chaudhary embark on a mission
that would go on to reshape the Indian
carpet industry.
A personification of simplicity, N. K.
Chaudhary is thoroughly dedicated to the
Indian hand-knotted rug weaving industry
with a mission to give it its rightful place
in the world and to bestow the benefit and
recognition of this to its apt owner, the
Indian weaver. For the welfare of weavers
and those indirectly linked with the rug
weaving industry, he set up an NGO by the
name of Jaipur Rugs Foundation, A voluntary,
non-profit and secular organization which
came into existence in the year 2004, Jaipur
Rugs Foundation under the guidance of Mr. N.
K. Chaudhary is working for the
socioeconomic development of weavers.
Through its initiatives thousands of weavers
are receiving skill enhancement training and
financial assistance for an independent and
prosperous future in rug weaving.
Fifty five year-old Chaudhary wakes up at
5am in the morning and takes stock of his
supply chain. It consists of 40,000 artisans
and number of looms spanning remote and sometimes
notorious locations across 10 states in
India. The looms are located in the yard of
the artisan’s houses. But yet his quality
team can tell which square inch of the
carpet was made that week and on which loom
and at which artisan’s house. Each loom is
visited twice a week. A production progress
report is generated and sent to the
head-quarters. The looms are in some of the
remotest areas of the country like the Bhil
tribal area in Gujarat. Each new carpet is a
different story; it is hand-knotted by a
family, sometimes over ten months. In
Gujarat, Jaipur Rugs has artisans in 200
villages spread over 100 kilometers. When
Chaudhary first went to Gujarat in 1988, it
was a flood prone area with no roads or
telephones. There was no bank either. But a
Government scheme had provided looms to
tribal families. Chaudhary had spotted a
wireless set in an exhibition in Ahmedabad
and got himself a radio license. He put in
15 fixed stations and bought 20 bikes and 2
jeeps to travel over rocky terrain. His
employees checked for quality, supplied raw
material and made payments. “Initially, I
would go to a weaver’s house and spend the
night and return after 2 or 3 days”
recollects Chaudhary.
The story goes all the way back to 1978;
Chaudhary, whose father ran a shoe shop,
gave up a job offer at a Life Insurance
company, to get into the carpet business. He
learnt how to weave from a master weaver at
a Government training school in Churu, a
small town in Rajasthan. Soon the business
expanded but they were contractors for an
exporter from Jaipur. “I learnt the process
and started truss ing my abilities. I am
transported to a different world when I’m
involved in with weavers. We just kept
expanding to several villages in Rajasthan
and eventually to neighboring Gujarat” he
says. He has spent a large part of his life
building the network of weavers and
improving quality while his brothers ran the
marketing and eventually they built an
exports business. Over 30 years he has been
honing the art of dyeing, obtaining the
right quality yarn, removing weaving defects
and eliminating washing problems. “In each
case we got to the deep root cause of the
problem and obtained the solution” he points
out. In 1999, he broke up with his brothers
and started Jaipur Rugs on his own. The
business struggled on for several years
because Chaudhary had never concentrated on
areas of business other than production. “It
was a process of self-discovery. I had to
own up for all that went wrong” he says. |
