A textile designer by education, an entrepreneur by passion and fervent admirer of traditional arts and crafts; Abhishek has 9+ years of professional experience including designing for home fashion, working with artisans, skilling rural communities, business development and exploring e-commerce as market place for marginalised artisans. After graduating as ‘Textile Designer’ from ‘National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT)’, Abhishek started his professional journey as ‘Design and Product Development’ head of a US based luxury home fashion brand. Within two years of this journey, he got inclined towards traditional textiles and founded a company named as ‘Prakritii’ and started working with hand block printing artisans of Rajasthan. Later, He worked as Lead Business Development of Textile and Craft in Drishtee Foundation. He was invited to present his research paper on ‘Significance of CSR Initiatives in Indian Handicrafts’ in UGC national level seminar held at Kirorimal College of Commerce in University of Delhi. In 2016, he decided to dedicate his professional life to explore Solar Charkha initiatives and joined Bhartiya Harit Khadi Gramodaya Sansthan as its CEO. In 2019, he founded Greenwear Fashion Private Limited with incubation support of IIMCIP to provide forward linkage support to the Mission Solar Charkha. For Abhishek, design is a process of providing purpose to art and intention. He aims to empower artisan and rural communities so that they become self sustainable and make a positive impact on the society. His passion lies in bringing design, innovation and technology to underprivileged and unorganized artisan clusters and marginalized communities.
