Handloom products get new lease of life

Hyderabad: India has the world’s largest number of handloom weavers and an extremely rich heritage of handloom products. But present generation prefers more of readymade items and to bring back the glory of handlooms the Facilities Management Council (FMC) has started organising various handlooms programmes across the country to market handloom products in a big way as there is a lot of buzz generated among the IT employees.

A total of Rs 52 lakh worth handloom clothes were purchased by visitors. Nearly 1.3 lakh people visited these four melas put together. The FMC was started in 2015 and later impressed by their work other multiple companies joined hands with them. The intention of FMC is to share ideas, knowledge, connectivity with other people and implement the ideas which the company gets from other people. There are more than 350 managers who daily interact with multiple groups of people not only in IT companies also at pharmaceutical, places as we have different groups of people in our council. Also, FMC has been organizing IT Handloom Melas, Fashion Shows and Walks to promote handlooms, to encourage IT people wear handlooms every Monday.

Satyanarayana Mathala, president FMC, said, “Networking is very important tool for FMC managers to improve their skills. We collect different knowledge from different IT companies like Google, Microsoft etc. Coming here they get lots of knowledge. We have 350 plus facilities managers who daily interact with multiple groups of people also, we have our own app FMC where people share lot of practical experiences, standard formats and operation procedures and we start implementing when somebody share their ideas.

FMC is actively interacting with government of Telangana to encourage wearing Handlooms, Satyanarayana Mathala stated. There are 400 IT/ITes companies in the city and more than four lakh employees work in them. If they all start wearing handlooms at least once in a week on Monday, it will receive huge fillip to the handlooms, he adds.

Rithsidarth, a Microsoft employee, said, “This is a great start for the IT professionals as most of the IT employees are now becoming eco-conscious.” Handloom clothes are eco-friendly and are naturally made. They support livelihood. They not only look dignified when go to the temples or religious place but also, good attire for office wear, he adds. However, the trend is changing now, and people prefer handloom clothes, he adds.

BY Vandana Sharma