Weaving a large web

www.nkchaudhary.com

Weaving a large web

How a man who learnt to weave with two looms in his compound in a small Rajasthan town built a country-wide network of 25,000 artisans in 8 states to build India’s largest hand-knotted carpets company.

Sixty-year-old Mr. Nand Kishore Chaudhary wakes up at 5am in the morning and takes stock of his supply chain. It consists of 25,000 artisans and 4000 looms spanning remote and sometimes notorious locations across 8 states in India. The looms are located in the yard of the artisan’s houses. But yet his quality team can tell which square inch of the carpet was made that week and on which loom and at which artisan’s house. Each loom is visited twice a week. A production progress report is generated and sent to the head-quarters.

The looms are in some of the remotest areas of the country like the Bhil tribal area in Gujarat. But information reaches the Jaipur Rugs head-quarters in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Each new carpet is a different story; it is hand-knotted by a family, sometimes over ten months.

The company has itself been crafted by Chaudhary very unconventionally; the organisation structure evolves organically. “I have learned to understand people deeply and recruit” he says. “This is a company that runs without management” he finishes. The workers have graduated into running the stores and the supply chain.

The designs for the carpets are generated on a computer by traditional artists.

Jaipur Rugs makes a variety of carpets from the finest to the more mundane; and in different sizes from the very large to small. The material is either silk, wool or both combined to create very unusual effects. The company uses 16 shades in a carpet and takes pride in the fact that nobody can combine shades and tones like them.