To help tribal handicrafts and artisans reach a bigger market, Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram has launched online commerce site Tribes India.
The portal has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and launched the Tribes India banner with a number of e-commerce businesses, including Amazon, GeM, Snapdeal, Paytm and Flipkart that will enable Tribes India to sell products from traditional artisans online. An Android app by the same name is also available on Google Play.
Launched e-Tribes India with the purpose to increase its reach to people and maximise trade in tribal products by linking with @amazonIN @Flipkart, @Snapdeal & @Paytm etc. Mos @jsbhabhor and @SbhagatBJP along with senior officials were also present pic.twitter.com/vfO55uLX5j
— Jual Oram (@jualoram) March 27, 2018
Speaking about the purpose of the site, Oram said that with the help of the digital site more than 55,000 tribal artisans connected to The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED) will get access to local as well as international markets.
Marketing handicrafts on e-tailers namely Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, GeM will be a game changer for tribal artisans, who generally do not even get the right price for their products.
The event also included the launching of the retail inventory software prepared by TRIFED, wherein all sales and procurement would be digitised. TRIFED will not accept manual information from its offices with effect from April 1. Tribes India currently has 55,000 tribal craftspeople working with them and products are available at 110 outlets across India.
It has also set up an ambitious retail sales target of Rs 100 crore to be achieved during 2018-19 with the help of e-commerce.
This is not all. The government e-marketplace (GeM) platform, which was in a pilot phase for the last one year, will soon formally launch services with more categories. It is expected to clock transactions of Rs 50,000 crore per year and touch the figure of Rs 2 lakh crore in the next few years.
It has also signed MoUs with the states of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh to standardize the financial procurement rules of different states.
The GeM was launched as a pilot in August 2016 as the government’s National Procurement Portal of India. In July last year, Intellect and Infibeam won the bid to run the government e-marketplace.
