17 January 2023, Mumbai
House of Chikankari has grown fivefold in two years. The craft driven clothing brand serves over 15,000 customers. The brand’s aim is to promote and add to the organisation of India’s chikankari industry while offering shoppers handicraft products through its dedicated e-commerce store and it foresees continued high levels of growth in both revenue and profit.
The vision is to make chikankari relevant for the modern audience while maintaining the authenticity of the craft. Much of the chikankari industry is unorganised which does not allow customers to get quality assurance and authenticity of handworks, which the brand aims at correcting.
House of Chikankari was launched in 2020 the business plans to generate employment in India’s handicrafts sector. To date, the brand has provided over 5,000 women with employment.
The word chikan is probably derived from the Persian word chikin or chikeen, which means a kind of embroidered fabric. This art has its own royal significance covering the Mughal period to the era of the Oudh nawabs, later growing as a fashion-centric form of needlecraft recognised the world over.
There are eleven processes before the embroidered cloth finally reaches customers, including cutting, sewing, printing, embroidery, washing, charak etc and more than six workers are employed at each step.
