Case study: Modernising the Indian textile
Revive traditional textile businesses through a range of lifestyle products!
As per the Indian brand equity foundation, India’s textile industry contributed seven percent of the industry output (in value terms) in FY19. It contributed two percent to the GDP of India and employed more than 45 million people in FY19. The sector contributed 15 percent to India’s export earnings in FY19.
The textile industry has around 4.5 crore employed workers including 35.22 lakh handloom workers across the country.
The domestic textiles and apparel market stood at an estimated US$ 100 billion in FY19.
However, we are losing the authenticity of handloom and other original textile crafts to the modernization and mass production industries.
Hence, the idea is to make these prints and crafts mainstream by introducing a range of sustainable lifestyle products.
I have made frames out of my mom’s old sarees (Indian traditional female attire) and the response from friends and family was overwhelming. I started seeing it being copied (no, I don't claim the idea) at places as per their cultural background and taste. And that's where I see its potential.
But that was all on a personal level.
How to translate this into a working business model was still a challenge.
After a few rounds of brainstorming sessions and endless discussions with my friends and colleagues from the relevant backgrounds, I was able to connect the dots and put this business ecosystem in place:
To keep the ideas fresh and rotating, I prefer to design and business students over fixed employees. Based on experience, these students do get recognition mostly through competitions but hardly those ideas sustain in a business environment.
And, now, here is the ready business setup they can use as an incubator and explore ideas aligned with system goals. Community development is a byproduct of the same.
This is how Nirmiti will be placed Among the indirect competition:
The uniqueness of the concept is in the connection between students (ideas) and execution (SHGs). This helps students to get real-time exposure and establishment, Buyers to get the affordable designed sustainable range, and units like SHG with skills and revenue.
Product Design
So far, It was an idea and a blueprint for the system. To make a product out of it was the next milestone!
While drafting ideas it was clear that this concept is divided into two digital products.
One is complete B2B in nature which includes all collaborators and the second one is B2C in form of e-commerce.
I have covered B2B in the following study as B2C was comparatively easy.
Design proposal is to have an Mobile app where Design Student can easily connect with SHG groups based on applied filters as well as find collaborators and suppliers.
Research
Domain and user!
The research strategy was designed to get the qualitative and quantitative insights which will help to shape up the product on the following lines:
- Current methods
- Effectivity and issues of the existing model
- Technology enabling sustainable growth
Based on which I approached Juhi (A SHG manager from Maharashtra) Aditya (Lifestyle Accessory Design student from Ahmedabad) and Druti (Business administration student from Ahmedabad) with interview guidelines.
Key findings -SHGs
- 80 lakh SHGs with active bank linkages in India.
- Involvement of 10 crore people of India.
- The aggregate bank balance of Rs.6500 crores.
- 90% of SHGs in India consist exclusively of women.
Self-help groups not only takes care of financial support but it works on a grassroots level for social-cultural improvements.
A major chunk of work for these groups comes from CSR initiatives of Citi based corporates. It is seasonal and group members themselves take care of skill development.
The second best comes from college students who visit for projects. Again, it is a one-time thing and it hardly reaches anywhere.
Thanks to the internet, the young group members are focusing on skill development and training, but, it's a work in progress and there is a long way to go. They definitely could use some help to speed up the process.
Juhi was a bit uncomfortable to come on a camera to share her views on the Nirmiti and day to day pain points but agreed to help me ultimately:
Key findings -Design students
- Not all classroom projects are commercially viable.
- Sourcing, monitoring, and post-project communication is always a challenge.
- The dependability of these groups is high.
- Designers lack go-to-market strategies while working on projects with SHGs/outside craftsmen.
- Business schools are yet to develop in business design.
- Collaborative efforts sound success at both ends.
- In India, there are around 1,670 colleges that offer Design courses and at least 5,500 B-schools in operation now.
Here is Aditya talking about his issues and views on the proposed idea:
Key findings -Market/Domain
Handloom is a major part of the textile industry followed by Prints and Dyeing.
The following facts have been covered in one of the publications by FICCI on the Indian handloom industry:
The operations of this industry are primarily household-based. The sector is one of the largest, albeit unorganized, economic activity in the country providing employment directly and indirectly to over 43.31 lakh weavers1 from rural and semi-urban areas, most of which are women and people from economically disadvantaged groups with as much as 77% of the adult weavers and allied workers in the sector being women. Strengths of the sector include minimal use of capital and power, environment-friendly production processes, and flexibility to innovate and offer products as per market requirements.
Challenges include that the contribution of women weavers and women working in ancillary activities is fully recognized in official statistics. Women should be accorded the same status as men during the census /other enumerations and counted as primary workers. This would not only boost women’s participation in the workforce but also ensure that women handloom workers can access institutional credit and other government schemes in their own name which will further improve their creditworthiness for future growth. Some other problems and challenges which are stifling the growth of the handloom sector and impacting its sustainability are — shortage of inputs and problem of working capital, lack of credit, marketing issues such as lack of awareness on customer preferences, inability to distinguish between handloom and power loom products, lack of promotional campaigns, inconsistencies in the quality of product and inefficiencies in the supply chain, greater competition from power looms and mills, technological backwardness, paucity in new designs, reduction in the number of weavers, poor policy dissemination and database crunch, etc.
Players like Fabindia, Raw mango, and Anita Dongre are very few from the initiative of connecting and working with the grassroots level when it comes to Indian textiles and there are even lesser players who work with micro financing groups along with students.
In this scenario, the brand positioning can be done as follows among the indirect competition:
Formulating the Problem Statement
It is easy to get tangled in this much information and lose focus. Hence, defining the problem statement!
How might we design a platform to connect the self help groups with design and business student in order to effectively and efficiently develop a green yet commercially viable product range with sustainable growth?
Persona, Empathy Map & Project Goals
The results of domain research & user interviews revealed there were several types of users with diverse needs.
So, I accumulated the different insights & patterns and integrated them into segments for studies.
To focus, I picked the Design Student segment as they will be the primary users of the platform.
Here, you can see their motivations, goals, needs, fears & frustrations:
A scenario where a student loses enthusiasm and an idea gets lost.
Now that I have my target user’s goals & pains ready, it was time to map it with the goals and come up with a mutual ground for business and users.
Based on the needs of the personas, I came up with POV statements that led to the creation of an action-oriented HMW statement which acted as a guide in establishing the MVP’s and helps ideate the best possible solution for each design challenge.
Derived the MVP features based on secondary and primary research along with user device choices, nature of information/communication, and the service provided in the application along with the brainstorming session on ‘what else can user get benefited by’ (and discussed those ideas with the users before putting on the plan)
Ideation
I created an application sitemap with high priority features and showcased a task flow for project timeline changes made by the primary i.e. student segment.
The site map for student login is created based on the scenarios and multiple task flows.
Skills for search and SHGs will be added prior to launch based on research for ease of execution.
Finding makers will be automated suggestions based on SHG tags followed by others and users will be able to add specific skills to the search. They can also search by name for direct contact.
Finding collaborators will be a skill, institute, and location-based search. A list of recommendations based on other inputs will be displayed along.
FInding supplier will be based on all material input search displayed from nearest to far. In the second sprint, it will be with the logic of distance and review.
The upload will help students to share guidelines, photos, and tutorials for ease of remote training.
The timeline will be shared with all the added project members and notifications based on the same will help to keep the project on track.
After I developed the user flows, I began to flesh out wireframes for tasks. At each and every stage of design, I had to ensure that the microcopy, interface of the application should be easy for the user to comprehend and interact which will enable quicker task completion and adherence to the project.
Below is the task flow for new project creation followed by Branding, UI elements and MVP:
Usability Testing
Aditya and his classmates were a great help throughout the project.
They seemed very excited and thrilled with the output. Please find the test planning here and consolidated results as below:
- Concept is interesting and will be revolutionary if goes to market
- Need a video tutorial explaining the process and concept. With no background knowledge it might be confusing
- Loved the simplicity and real touch in UI
- Color might be difficult to differentiate for special user
- Having option to add skills, SHG and supplier on home screen with buttons at the bottom will be helpful as view more is not suggestive enough
- Voice input and smart assistant will be more user friendly if budget allows
- Personal comment — Pink is not going with the earthy natural theme
- Please elaborate upload, timeline, and adding comment. Can you copy paste online ref. easily ?
Design decisions:
- Storyboard the concept and process videos
- Implement the videos
- Find an alternative for pink
- Design the second level of wireframes
- Find ways to add all options of home screen with focusing hierarchy
Growth Map
Product:
- Complete all the user flows
- Usability testing for each stage
- Implementing prioritised changes based on user feedback
Project:
- Include SHGs in product research
- Develop go to market strategy
Please find complete Case Study here!
Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Email for any feedback and suggestions :)
