Background Paper: Insights into the Indian Carpet Industry

This paper provides background on the Indian handwoven carpet industry, as part of the focus of Enablers and Obstacles to UK-India Trade, a 3-year project undertaken jointly by academics at King’s College London, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and non-academic partner Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The project focuses on the role of MSMEs in Indian exports and uses the handwoven carpet industry as a context and case to study this. The aim of this paper is to provide a background of the carpet industry in India and highlight its importance for exports and the economy more broadly. We also describe the structure of this industry and the production process through insights from preliminary fieldwork undertaken by the project team. The paper also highlights the limitations of existing databases in the context of Indian MSMEs, which remains a major stumbling block in ad- vancing our understanding of MSMEs and their role in exports.

Keywords: Handmade Carpets · MSMEs · Financial Constraints · Exports · Indian Manufacturing