Will AI Agents Discourage or Supercharge Handwoven Craft Commerce? - Amit Singha, Anuprina

Here's a question that sounds absurd until you think about it for five minutes: Can AI, the most automated thing on the planet, actually save one of the most human things on the planet - handwoven craft?

Weaving on a handloom takes days, sometimes weeks. Every thread is placed by a person who learned the craft from their ancestors. In villages across India, artisans carry this tradition for more than 200 years. But now AI agents are making purchasing decisions for customers. They're filtering products, ranking sellers, optimizing discovery, even making purchases on behalf of other agents. So what happens to storytelling-heavy, emotionally-driven craft commerce when the buyer isn't even human?

Amit Singha left a corporate strategy career in M&A at Infosys to go back to his roots in West Bengal. He's now building Anuprina, a technology-enhanced ecosystem that connects hundreds of artisans across multiple weaving clusters around India. He's using AI to generate product images instead of expensive photoshoots, building a mobile app so artisans can update order progress in real time, and solving working capital with a prepaid made-to-order model. Five years in, he's figured out something most tech founders miss - the artisans don't need you to sell their craft. They need you to bridge the gap between their skill and the world's demand.

This conversation covers what on-ground reality looks like in artisan clusters, why accelerators actually helped, how Anuprina solved working capital without raising a massive round, and whether AI will help or hurt handwoven craft.

Key Takeaways: Tech Meets Tradition

The On-Ground Reality:

• Artisans understand their craft and its global importance, but they have zero visibility into where the demand is coming from
• Aggregators often squeeze artisans on price, pushing them to use polyester and unsustainable materials to stay competitive
• Anuprina isn't just buying and selling - they're in the manufacturing space to control quality and sustainability of raw materials

The Sustainable Business Model:

• 80-90% of buyers pay 50% advance before production starts, so the money comes before the artisan needs to be paid
• Artisans get paid weekly as soon as their work is done, with zero delays
• Large B2B buyers with 60-90 day credit cycles were consciously avoided in favor of small-to-medium international brands
• Working capital is actually negative because of credit cycles with vendors for logistics and raw materials

AI in Craft Commerce:

• Product images are AI-generated using Google's image models, eliminating expensive photoshoots and enabling 100+ product launches per week
• Buyers are already discovering Anuprina through AI platforms instead of Google
• The human imperfection in handloom is the product's moat - a "flaw" created by a robot isn't a flaw, it's just a defect

Q: You were working in corporate strategy at Infosys, doing mergers and acquisitions. What made you go back to West Bengal and start working with artisans?

Amit Singha: I'm born and brought up in West Bengal, around 100 kilometers from Kolkata, where Anuprina is currently headquartered. This place was, when I was growing up, inundated with handicrafts and artisans. Over the years, we know how systematically this craft sector has been reducing, going into extinct mode in certain crafts. The same thing happened where I grew up.

My father at one point worked with these artisans, so I had that connection. I went and did my studies in Kolkata and then across Bangalore and multiple places, worked in corporate strategy in IT. And then I saw that this is a good time to try something in this space. I wanted to see if there's still enough demand for this kind of craft globally, through digital. That's how I started Anuprina around five years back.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Some founders find problems to solve. Others grew up watching the problem unfold in their own backyard. Amit didn't discover the artisan crisis - he lived it.

Q: What does the on-ground reality in artisan clusters tell you that sitting in a Bangalore coworking space never would?

Amit Singha: To be honest, I was working in Bangalore before this and continued even after I started. One thing you can't hide is that you get that energy of startups when you're building from a city like Bangalore. You won't get that in a remote location. But luckily I was born and brought up there, so I could create a headquarters close to artisan clusters.

The on-ground reality is that these artisans are still not connected with the global news. They understand their craft, they understand how important it is on a global scale, because from time to time people tell them. These crafts are getting more niche, and consumers globally are looking for it because it's something you have to enjoy while it's there. But artisans only know their craft and how to deliver it. That's the only link they have. Our job is to be a two-way bridge - not just telling the world this craft exists, but telling the artisans how their crafts are valued worldwide.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: A two-way bridge, not a one-way supply chain. The artisans don't just need a customer - they need to know their work matters.

Q: You've done a lot of accelerators for Anuprina. Was it actually helpful or just the same thing repeated?

Amit Singha: For me it was a learning journey because I didn't come from a startup background. If you already have enough knowledge and have run a company before, I don't know how much this can help. But these accelerators gave us a lot of tie-ups - free AWS credits, free Google Cloud credits for AI. That's helping us build without burning a lot of money.

They teach you how to become fundable, how to create your investment thesis and business model, how to pitch to investors. And some are impact-focused, so they teach you how to measure impact. We even got a convertible note through one, which helped build trust and credibility. You never know which one is going to help in what way. If you put your focus and do one accelerator at a time, it can definitely open a lot of doors. And honestly, sometimes as a founder you feel a little alone, so meeting other founders and building those relationships is definitely helpful.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Accelerators aren't for everyone. But if you're a non-startup person entering the startup world, they're basically a crash course plus a Rolodex.

Q: Payments and working capital are brutal in this industry. How did you solve it?

Amit Singha: It's actually the other way around for us. I consciously wanted to build something sustainable. Initially I was going to domestic fashion brands in Delhi and Bombay. The larger they are, the larger the working capital cycle - 60 days, 90 days, sometimes more. That's when I realized this is not the market I want to go for.

So I shifted to digital and wanted to capture small-to-medium international brands. They come to our website, order some samples first, and if they like something, we do a made-to-order model. They pay 50% advance and then we start processing. So the money comes first, and then we pay the artisans. We pay them on a weekly basis, the moment their work is done, no delay. And we get credit cycles with our logistics and raw material vendors. So working capital is actually negative. 80-90% of our buyers are on the advance model.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: He didn't raise a war chest to fix working capital. He designed the business model so cash flow fixes itself. That's the bootstrap masterclass.

Q: You built a custom website instead of using Shopify. Why, and was it worth it?

Amit Singha: Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know. I was discovering as I was building. Most brands use Shopify, that's the safe and reliable way. But I had to face a lot of issues initially because we built a very custom website. It's difficult to maintain and build, certainly. But now that we have an in-house tech team and a tech co-founder, we've been able to build something very unique and differentiated.

Our website has a lot of customization. People can choose fabric, dye it in different colors, change fabrics on printed products. We've expanded to apparel as well. You like a shirt, you can customize it in different fabrics. And we're building AI where you can see in real time how it will look in different fabrics before you purchase. That's one part. The other is a tool we built called Artisan Flow, which is our supply chain traceability and efficiency software. From the moment a B2B user places an order that takes more than 6-8 weeks, they can track their product's build journey throughout.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Shopify is safe. Custom is painful. But when your product needs customization by nature, custom tech becomes your competitive moat.

Q: You're building a mobile app for artisans. How do you get people who primarily use WhatsApp to adopt it?

Amit Singha: That's something we'll have to find out on the ground, honestly. It's easy to just say we'll do it, but until we do it we won't know. What we've seen is that WhatsApp they've learned to use. They can send photos and videos. Our idea is to create an app that's very simple, vernacular for them to read and understand, and easy to update.

But the main question I thought about was - what is the incentive for them to use it? The only incentive that works in this space, any space I think, is monetary incentive. So if you update properly and on time, you get 10% extra or something like that. They get value, we get value. It's a mutual benefit.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The best adoption strategy for any tool isn't training or UX. It's money. Pay people to use it, and they'll figure out the interface themselves.

Q: AI agents are now discovering products, ranking sellers, even making purchases. What happens to handwoven craft when the buyer isn't human?

Amit Singha: It's tricky. Most of the clients we cater to, they're not coming to us for the technology. They're coming for the product itself. I don't think they're tech-savvy enough or progressive enough to hand everything over to AI agents. They want to understand what's going on, they're very hands-on. They like this craft because they like the hand touch of it. They're not against tech, but they won't leave everything to AI.

From another angle, if you look at the hardware side where the product gets made, a lot of robotics has come up. In China, industrial looms are completely automated, no people running them. But in our case, the supply we're catering to is handloom, and that's what people are looking for. Even if everything is automated, there's something people still love because it's not automated. There's a lot of hand and story to it.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI can discover the artisan. AI can process the order. But AI can never be the reason someone buys handloom. The imperfection IS the product.

Q: So human imperfection is actually the moat?

Amit Singha: Yes. The flaw of human mistake - that's what makes the product unique. When you try to do that using a robot, there will be no flaw, and that creates a completely different kind of product. The flaw is not an actual flaw - it brings a lot of texture to the fabrics and products. That's very unique. And then it's eco-friendly, and the storytelling and a lot of other things also play around it.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: In a world where AI makes everything perfect, imperfection becomes luxury. The thread that's slightly off-center isn't a defect - it's proof a human made it.

Q: Are you seeing any traffic coming from AI platforms instead of Google already?

Amit Singha: Yeah, it's still mostly coming through Google organic search, but time to time we ask customers how they found us and they say they used ChatGPT or similar tools. But honestly, it's the same thing. Instead of just focusing on Google, you focus on how you can be discovered in many places. That's the only change. But buyers still come and verify after finding us. So we have to be ready in terms of how we're promoting so that we get discovered in the AI world.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI discovery is already happening. It's not a future problem - it's a today problem. The brands showing up in ChatGPT results are already winning deals.

Q: In your last five years, what's been the hardest part of building Anuprina?

Amit Singha: Initially, understanding everything. That was a challenge when you start from scratch. Then it came around managing people, which happens with a lot of founders. Unless you come from a background of managing, it's hard. Especially for us, it's very hands-on, a lot of people involved on a contractual basis.

In the last two years, it's been about bringing tech properly in a way that's long-term and sustainable. Now we've reached a certain stage from a tech perspective, but the challenge is - can we use this tech to truly scale? Scalability is something we're trying to figure out. Theoretically it makes sense, but practically we'll have to prove it.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Five years of building and they're still figuring out scale. That's not a red flag - that's how hard it is to digitize an industry that's been analog for 200 years.

Q: What's the biggest myth people have about India's handloom sector?

Amit Singha: One thing that comes to mind - most Indian consumers buying sarees and stoles directly from artisans through aggregators think that because they're buying artisan products, the artisans are getting paid well and everything is sustainable and eco-friendly. But that's not the reality. These aggregators only buy and sell. Because there's so much price competition, even if artisans want to continue their craft, they don't get the value. They end up relying on polyester and unsustainable yarns just to survive.

The end consumer has no idea how much the artisan is actually earning. If they're paying 1,000 or 10,000 rupees, how many layers are in between? That's why we're not just buying and selling - we're in the manufacturing space to make sure the raw materials and chemicals are sustainable. Otherwise you just build inventories, sell at price-conscious rates, and the artisan gets squeezed.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Buying handloom doesn't automatically mean supporting artisans. If you don't know the supply chain, your "sustainable" purchase might be funding the exact exploitation it claims to fight.

Q: What AI tools are you using day-to-day at Anuprina?

Amit Singha: All of our finished product images are generated through Google's image models. We didn't do expensive photoshoots for most products. We just generate them, promote them, and on order we make them. Otherwise you have to photograph everything, which increases cost and time. With AI, I can launch 100 products a week by 1% of the effort. I can launch a thousand products by 10%.

Our tech team is building product discovery using AI layers so products are displayed based on user activity. Personally, I've automated a lot of day-to-day business processes. Content writing, sourcing product images from our sitemap and generating everything automatically. All our UX and UI designs are now done through AI tools instead of Figma. Even if you're a non-technical person, vibe coding and all the available tools make it much easier to build now.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI-generated product photos for handwoven fabrics. The irony is beautiful - the most human product being marketed by the most artificial tool. And it works.

Final Thoughts: When Tech Serves Tradition

Amit's perspective on the future of craft: "If handweaving gets replaced by AI, nobody will buy it. Because the people who buy handloom, they don't buy it because it's efficient. They buy it because it's human."

The bottom line: Anuprina isn't trying to automate artisans out of existence. It's using technology to handle everything around the artisan - discovery, payments, traceability, product photography, order management - so the artisan can focus on the one thing that can never be replicated: the craft itself. That's a fundamentally different approach from most tech-in-traditional-industry plays.

The business model is smart. Prepaid orders solve working capital. AI-generated images solve the product catalog problem. A custom platform enables the customization that craft inherently needs. And by staying in the manufacturing side, they control quality and sustainability instead of just being another middleman.

For anyone entering the fashion or craft space, Amit's advice is clear - pick your layer of the supply chain, figure out your B2B versus B2C model early, and if you want to sell globally, sustainability isn't optional. Europe is already getting stricter. In 3-4 years, you'll have to prove your supply chain is sustainable, not just claim it.

Q: How can people connect with you and learn more about Anuprina?

Amit Singha: You can check us out at anuprina.com. We'd love to connect with anyone who's interested in handwoven craft, whether you're a B2B buyer looking for sustainable fabrics or just someone who appreciates artisan work. Reach out to me on LinkedIn as well, always happy to chat about this space.

Final words: In a world racing toward automation, Amit is betting on the exact opposite - the imperfect, time-consuming, deeply human art of handweaving. But he's not being naive about it. He's wrapping that tradition in technology so it can survive and thrive in a digital-first economy. The flaw in the weave isn't a bug. It's the feature. And in an AI-saturated market where everything looks polished and perfect, that imperfection might just be the most valuable thing left.