E-commerce, disparity, stakeholder engagement, co-creation, value creation

        Monica and Manoj, founders of Craftsvilla.com, once had an opportunity to interact with rural artisans and designers, in her road trip to Kutch. While interacting, they realized that the middlemen involved in this unorganized retail business were paid very less for the products. The single reason for this disparity they found was the process of taking the art form to retail stores (middleman involved). Most of the artisans, because of no return from the business, want to disengage their future generations to learn the art.

        The reasons for the extinct includes illiteracy, inability to reach the customers, lack of awareness to understand customer needs and customization, better bargaining power of the middlemen, lack of awareness about the government support programs, lack of mentors to guide them, poverty, and so on. With the passion for Indian culture and the urge to benefit the artisan-producers, they decided to work on an e-commerce business model, craftsvilla.com, a $200million start-up. The idea was to create a platform where the artisans could directly connect with consumers and earn a good livelihood. The present case study on Craftsvilla. Com is built under the context to explore the concept of co-creation in e-commerce industry and the business opportunities for Craftsvilla through co-creation. The data for the case study was collected over a period of 10 months, starting from October 2015 to August 2016.Data collection primarily was through regular interaction with the founders, artisans, employees, and customers of Craftsvilla. Learning from the case will help to identify various methodologies to adopts co-creation opportunities by engaging stakeholders.