India's textiles ministry Monday signed an agreement with online retailer Flipkart to provide an online marketing platform to handloom weavers, an official statement said here.

Through this exclusive agreement, Flipkart will provide weavers in India an online marketing platform, infrastructural support in data analytics and customer acquisition to help them get remunerative prices for their products and scale up their business.

Flipkart will provide online marketplace for sale of the products of the weavers/master craftsmen/national awardees/state level awardees and the others as advised by Development Commissioner for Handlooms.

For marketing support, the textiles ministry has taken many initiatives from time to time such as organizations of domestic marketing events, participation in international fairs and buyer-seller meets, said the statement.

"However, in the present scenario of online marketing and net savvy consumers, it has been felt need to provide online marketing platform to handloom weavers so that exquisite handloom products of remote village is made available to discerning buyers," it added.

This kind of a coordinated effort has been planned and executed for the first time with Flipkart for handloom weavers which will bridge the missing linkages of market intelligence, market access and logistics and help the Indian weavers in getting remunerative prices for their products, it said.

"Flipkart, with its access to the largest customer base in the country, aims to help weavers make optimal use of the available data to guide entrepreneurs and artisans on areas such as deciding on the right selling price, payment automation, proper packaging, transportation, brand building etc," the statement added.

Minister of State (Independent Charge) Textiles Santosh Kumar Gangwar said the heads of all the organizations must work tirelessly for the upliftment of weavers and ensure the success of the venture.

Periodic review of the sales and progress of the weavers in the targeted clusters should be carried out, he said.

The minister emphasized that the focus of this association should be to help weavers and weaver entrepreneurs to produce products in tune with the buyer requirements and grow significantly so that they may become manufacturers not only at a local but also at a national level.