Okhai.org established in the year 2002, is an e-commerce company formed under the wing of Tata Chemicals Society for Rural Development (TCSRD, 1980), society and trust established by the Tata Group for the socio-economic, environmental and overall development of rural/semi-urban societies established Okhai(.org) in the year 2002 to provide a livelihood to the citizens of Okhamandal, a remote village in Gujarat which is home to many semi-nomadic tribes like the Rabaris, Vaghers and Ahirs. The women of this village are skilled artisans who specialize in Appliqué needlework, Heer Bharat, Kathi and Bead Work.
Okhai clothes are mostly solid fabrics adorned with dainty and intricate embroidery or prints. All their motifs are inspired by nature, shapes, ancient crafts and the surroundings. They have seasonal collections being spring-summer and autumn-winter; the choice of colors are apt as they go for lighter and brighter tones for summers and darker for winters. Okhai designers find an inspiration, set themes and work on the collection in accordance with the theme.
Okhai offers handcrafted apparel and lifestyle products which are Fair Trade Certified. It is a contemporary brand that constitutes ladies’ wear, men’s wear, home décor products and accessories, all of which are adorned with mirror work, patchwork, hand blocks, or embroidery, created as a vibrant expression of the rural way of life, rituals and legends. The materials used are sourced locally and directly from vendors across the country. They use ZERO electricity, cause ZERO water or soil pollution and emit ZERO carbon into the atmosphere, through all their production processes. Transparency being a fundamental principle, Okhai aims to answer the most pressing question “who made my clothes” ergo, the founders have very thoughtfully inserted snippets and details of each artisan who is involved in the making of the products.
Okhai is directly connecting the artisans to the urban customers by providing an e-commerce website which is accessible nationwide. Okhai has paved a way for the customers to connect with the artisans and thereby preserving and protecting the age-old crafts and traditions, by providing a digital platform and putting the artisans of Okhamandal on the map. Okhai works exclusively with women cotton farmers. Kirti Poonia, the head of Okhai says that it is at the core of the brand to help women become the agents of change by enabling them to be financially independent and be the backbone of their families.Tata Group has been known to contribute significantly towards the growth and development of the society as well as our surroundings through their philanthropic and CSR activities like Arogya, Kaushalya, Amrutha and so on.
In a nutshell, Tata via Okhai aims to create contemporary, minimalistic, eco-friendly, sustainable and comfortable clothing, decor and accessories which are ethically produced by 1000s of happy hands who are a part of a tight-knit community & self-help groups of Okhamandal. Let’s take a deeper look at their ethical modus operandi and what they have to offer..
The women artisans of Okhamandal are the backbone of the company. Okhai management consider the artisans as partners, as equals. The head artisan is a part of Okhai’s board of trustees.
2300 women artisans are employed and they work in assembly groups; Each group of the artisan cluster specializes in a particular craft; some stitch, some embroider, and so on. They recieve training with regards to design, merchandising & costing. They attend special workshops conducted by international speakers. The brand also enrolls them into NIFT and NID programs to stay ahead of trends. Fabrics are sourced with the help of 0 middlemen, directly from other TATA Clusters situated in Munnar, Lucknow, Varanasi and Kenya.
Since they flourished online, first it comes as no surprise that they have a rather prominent social media following.
And so it makes perfect sense to introduce hyperlinks by employing shoptabs on instagram and facebook. According to my observation, Okhai is very active on Social Media and respond to comments and queries. Their user engagement is great.
They have their own website through which they sell and apart from that they also sell through multi e-retail platforms such as the above.
The above graph shows the traffic for their own website. We can tell that the peak of the bell is reached in april and sales and the number of visitors declined after the onset of the pandemic. Okhai made 23 millions dollars of revenue in the financial year 16-17 which is double than the turnover of AY 14-15. Okhai has also managed to reduce manufacturing costs by 50% and increasing productivity.
Some of the challenges that Okhai faces is operational, managerial issues, performance, competitors, logistics and data security. Since they’re a sister company of Tata, the receive support from Tata IQ, for tech support, operations, digital marketing, customer acquisition and business expansion programmes
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