Bharathi ManoRanjan

State Vice President, Tamil Nadu Handloom Council

I am Shree Bharathi Manornajn hailing from Erode, the turmeric town of India. I did my schooling in Erode, Bachelors of Commerce in Coimbatore and MIB at Singapore. I come from a family, which is involved in the construction industry. Though the core business is Construction, our family is involved in a number of social projects and educational initiatives. So as an individual I always wanted to pursue my career in a social business, which involves lot of creativity and humanness and was never inclined towards the commercial mainstream businesses. Hence I am now a social entrepreneur. Chennimalai is our native village, 27 kms away from Erode. It is a handloom village, which had over 100,000 handloom weavers a decade ago. However, the threat of commercialization led to a decline in the number of weavers. The art form is in its verge of extinction. That is when Five P Venture, a handloom fabric manufacturing company that began with a magnificent vision – to revive the Chennimalai cluster was started. Once a thriving village, Chennimalai weavers (Tamil Nadu, India) boasted of the most exquisite handloom designs. The power looms long replaced the handlooms. It was only in 2012, my dad Mr.Devarajan, along with trusted friends and associates came together, and instrumented a change to happen. A business venture took place with a focus on preserving India’s heritage and also giving back some love to the community. All the fabrics at Five P are woven by hand using traditional and eco-friendly methods. Thus began the manufacturing of beautiful fabrics and designs to meet the demands of the eco-conscious buyer. REPORT THIS AD We have our inhouse brand called Nool by Hand through which we cater to the domestic Indian retail market. All our weavers are from the Chennimalai village. Now there are 20 weavers, which comprise both Jacquard, and Dobby weavers. They are originally trained to weave cotton and synthetic bed sheets, which are coarser. Now we have trained them to weave linen, denim and finer count materials, which they are learning with so much passion. Two of our NIFT interns Purnima and Rashmitha who worked with our weaver Mr.Rajendran for developeing a furnishing collection, were so fascinated to find the weaver to be very sharp in understanding their design input and implement it on the textile so well. Two of the weavers Mr.Murugesan and Mr. Kandhasamy underwent silk training at the Bangalore Silk Board. Silk is something very new to the cluster and this would help the weavers enhance their skills for the niche market.