“Even if I want to stay in a hotel in Hyderabad or Jaipur, they will not allow it. It is some kind of slavery. International acclaim came from Capgemini, an IT company in France.                                        

A software engineer with MS in Software from BITS Pilani selling clothes and launching a tiny boutique in a city like Kozhikode was difficult to digest for many.Wholesale PVC Shower curtains  Weavers and handloom have always enthralled Anjali Chandran. Investment means liability, profit and repayment of loans.“Even in my early days I used to wear dresses made of handloom,” she says, adding that not roaming on the streets of Kozhikode makes her feel like a fish out of water. “We should support her as it is the fight of a woman to sustain,” they said. She has one daughter, Charu Nainika. But many families feel that I am their lucky customer. They will insist that I stay with them as they are concerned about me,” Anjali says.”But the family, husband and parents always backed Anjali. Those who were aware of my IT background thought there was something wrong with me. The venture was the first online boutique on Facebook from Kozhikode in those days. “I need money only to live. Anjali went to countless weaving villages in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.It all started with a Facebook page named ‘Impresa’ in 2012. So they ensure that their first design work reaches me,” she elaborates. Projects focusing on Kerala weavers, an e-platform for weavers to sell products on their own, formation of a weavers’ network and so on.. Some even asked me to my face, ‘Are you not ashamed of starting such a tiny textile shop after leaving a top IT brand? Oh, it was such an era of opposition. It is not that I was able to revive the entire sector.You can have enough duplicate screen printed versions of handloom fabric. The embarrassment touched the sky when she started selling handloom products. But changes came. Business is still a male-dominated world. And more customers started coming in search of ‘Impresa’ online as well as at the boutique. The few collections were sold out soon.

The embarrassment touched the sky when she started selling handloom products. The weavers follow the ‘tie-dye-weave’ system, where they weave the coloured threads and don’t follow colouring after weaving. “In the early days, I was working in an IT firm. A young woman alone coordinating the painting, furnishing, purchase and everything, the adjacent merchants thought she was a divorcee. Handloom products and the streets of Kozhikode were her two key passions. There was a good demand. “I enjoyed it.”Initially, when she started the boutique in 2014, it was a textile shop for others. “You have to let the customers bleed to ensure the remittance on time,” she said. But the original is original. Anjali’s husband Laju is an administrative officer in a company. A native of Naduvannur near Kozhikode, this software engineer at Wipro, Bengaluru, quit her job to explore her passions. Recognition came. So let ‘Impresa’ be small in size. The online forum is enough to reach out to the right customers.in. “Even while working in Bengaluru I used to visit the city alone, just to have a feel,” she adds. It is not mechanical work, but a meditation. It needs a lot of investment.“When I visited one of the famous weaving villages, the looms were almost abandoned and even master weavers were relocating to other jobs. The Italian word Impresa was suggested by her husband, which means ‘signature’ or ‘emblem’.It was quite embarrassing for many when she started roaming around the city.But those who knew Anjali were not amazed. The sudden feedback from Facebook encouraged me. They will be proud to hand over the trade to the next generation”. “Thank God, it was that support, which helped me hang on,” she says. Parents, who advised wards earlier to follow me and sent their children to get advice on the IT career, started telling their children ‘don’t be like Anjali’. But what I tell the buyers is that when you buy the original fabrics, it would help some weaver in a remote village earn a living, helping the master weavers to remain in the craft. After one year, the ‘Impresa’ team was successful in bringing back many of the weavers to work. Looms started sounding and for many families, life became colourful. The recognition helped her reach out to the best global players in handloom fabrics.The reach of ‘Impresa’ widened soon.During her visits to the weavers, Anjali stays with them. “We laid out on Facebook the rarest ethnic collections sourced straight from the weavers,” she says.  What next? She is not serious about expanding the business fast.