In a crowded ecommerce market, artisans help a new startup stand out

Northeast India. What image does that word bring to your mind? What does the landscape look like? The people? The cities?

Chances are, you’re picturing it completely wrong.

Far from the starkly urban New Delhi or Bangalore, the region is largely untouched by industrialization. Many people live in villages and make a living by farming. Tucked between Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Bangladesh, and Burma and connected to India by a tiny strip of land, it’s easy to mistake the region for a different country altogether.

It’s nothing to feel bad about. Meghanath Singh says that most Indians from outside the area don’t know the place or its culture, but he’s hoping to change that with a little bit of ecommerce.

Meghanath, who is from the northeast of India, founded Giskaa, an online store that sells handicrafts, food, and other handmade items from the region. He says the store has a triple purpose – to sell items, to help artisans in the region break into the ecommerce market, and to educate people across India, particularly those in large cities, about northeast Indian culture.

“We always feel like, when we walk around India, they’ll mistake us for people from Thailand or China because of the [way we] look,” he says.

Meghanath, who is also Giskaa’s CEO, is from a state called Manipur, near Bangladesh and bordering Burma. He lived in the state until he was 17, then spent 22 years living in other parts of India. He came to Bangalore in 2009 after working in IT and founded Giskaa in 2014 with Surchand Wahengbam and Ratheesh Elayat. The startup is based in Bangalore, a long way from the founder’s hometown.

“People like me who have left their homes in the northeast, looking for better career opportunities […] we have always felt this lack of awareness from the rest of mainstream India about the northeast,” Meghanath explains.

Lost and found in translation

Getting a leg up in India’s ecommerce market today can be a struggle. Giants like Flipkart and Amazon got an early start in the online shopping market. Anyone else who wants to break in is going to have to play catch up. That doesn’t phase Meghanath. His secret weapon? Giskaa doesn’t just sell products – it tries to create romance around each item by giving it a backstory.

“We had to create awareness from the ground up, so we focused a lot on stories, telling stories about products, and reading that interest in terms of passion.” said Meghanath. This lends itself well to organic and artisanal products – but is of course something that would not go over as well with electronics, in his opinion. The store’s website also features a blog that explains the use of and history behind select products.

One of the biggest challenges for Meghanath also makes for some workplace humor when he gets questions from people inquiring about the items on the website. The top three highest-selling items on Giskaa, for example, are totally unfamiliar to most people across India.

Eco-conscious crafts