When booze-fuelled chats bring livelihood to 150 rural artisans

“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

34 years later, Charles Bukowski’s words rung true when four IIT graduates Mahendra Singh, Aman Goel, Gagandeep Gupta and Krishna Prasad developed the idea for ELEMENTS over booze, Pink Floyd and Kishore Kumar.

The Chinese Ganesha

For the past few years, India has been importing idols from China. The synthetic idols have flooded Indian markets, and it won’t be surprising if China eventually becomes a mass producer of all major world cultures. In an Economic Times interview last year, Mr Uday Kotak, Managing Director of the Kotak Mahindra Bank, went as far as to say, ‘Can we afford to import Chinese Ganeshas?’

The mass production of a small part of a diverse Indian culture means we’re side-lining thousands of art forms and artisans into extinction. These industries are inadvertently engaging in a kind of cultural cleansing, and we’re enabling it.

Connecting Rural Artisans

Says Singh, ‘Born with the idea of promoting social inclusion in India, ELEMENTS works to seamlessly connect rural artisans with the mainstream corporates through the medium of contemporary corporate gifting solutions. We do it in a symbiotic way so that both the artisans and corporates mutually benefit; hence, we are able to define our mission as “Spreading Smiles”.’

ELEMENTS is a means for local art forms and artisans to thrive (through corporate gifting solutions) in an arena where cheap mass-produced unsustainable products have ravaged the marketplace into a museum of bland reproductions.

Since 2012, ELEMENTS has developed a network of over 150 artisan families in rural Rajasthan, serving the needs of special gifting in the corporate industry in India and abroad.

Working on merit, not charity

A lot of handicrafts come from charity organisations and trusts. The single most frustrating problem with this situation is that it doesn’t make the part of our cultures that are marketable sustainable. Artists cannot thrive; they survive on small charities doled out for art that is unique and richly cultural.

Singh and his friends realised two things: the unstructured nature of corporate gifting, and the need to make art production financially lucrative for India’s highly dispersed and disconnected artisans, many who may be the last generation of men and women experts in rare forms of Indian art.

‘With previous experience in gift finalisation at our organisations, we had realized that corporate gifting in India is highly unstructured and that their existed possibility of creating a social brand in the space. We quickly moved to study the different types of gifts on offer which were mostly being procured from China. This seemed rather unreasonable to us given the huge pool of talented arts and artisans that India boasts of. Our travels in and around UP and Rajasthan helped us identify that lack of contemporary products, customisation and marketing capabilities is keeping the Indian arts away from the lucrative market of corporate gifts. At the same time, the artisans who are custodians of our artful culture lived marginalised lives.’

Whilst trying to promote the concept of ELEMENTS in India, the team ironically found support all the way in Spain. The prestigious IE Business School in Madrid helped in ELEMENTS’s incubation when their social business plan won the Global Entrepreneurship Challenge. Luckily, the recognition was an advantageous proof of success. The boys quit their jobs and went full throttle.

Providing sustainability to artisans in India was profitable for those in rural India and those benefiting from their work down town, but ELEMENTS found a way to incorporate work from rural India into the corporate industry, so often blamed for eroding culture.

More than just art

One of ELEMENTS’s first project was promotion of a German beer brand in India, where the team was assigned a brand-wagon gifting project that required infusing Indian culture with German. Inspired by unique Rajasthani marble painting with gold leaf, they re-created the Statue of Bavaria in this Rajasthani style.

Singh elaborates, ‘The customization and the social aspect of our product earned great appreciation from our client and their clients. We learned two new things about our own offerings: Our offerings have higher perceived value since, more than gifts they are looked at as pieces of art. Secondly, corporates who are often wary of the effectiveness of their charity-based CSR activities are able to recognize a unique CSR-fulfilling activity through such gifting, which ensures direct employment to marginalized artisans of the society.

‘An example of this is the leather journals we created for an organisation in Geneva by working with traditional Mojari makers from Udaipuria village.’

ELEMENTS’s ability to recognise good and unique art from rural India goes a long way, especially since none of them are artists, studied art or have any background knowledge about the history of arts and handicrafts in India. But, the learning and discovery process this job allows helps them create exclusive marketing merchandise that supports Indian artisans. Their investment in them also generates better quality work from the artisans.

‘Our efforts on the ground helped us earn the trust of our artisans, who were willing to put extra effort in developing modern products. We’re able to bring together our design, marketing knowledge and network to get these artisans true value for their products,’ says Singh. He continues, ‘Unlike other handicraft manufacturers, we like to and ensure to work directly with our artisans with no involvement of middlemen. This guarantees us the intended benefits we want to directly pass on to our artisans.’

As the privileged and learned youth of India, they feel it’s their responsibility to remove the artisan class from their rut and marginalisation. This process acts as motivation for their work.

‘We believe we are committed to giving voice to thousands of artisans in coming years. Whatever we are doing, it feels honest at heart,’ ends Singh.

To find out more about the organisations efforts, you can check them out on their Facebook page, website, e-commerce portal or their blog.