Centre's lessons in branding, marketing for tribals

With a growing demand for forest products, Centre on Tuesday launched an initiative with the IIT Kanpur to train tribals to better market their products and help them run micro-enterprises.

The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (Trifed) launched the six-week training programme for tribals that aims to tap the traditional knowledge and skills and add branding, packaging and marketing skills to optimise their income.

The ‘Tech for Tribals’ initiative utilises the market-led enterprise model by setting up Van Dhan Kendras across 21 states and one union territory and involving 3.68 lakh tribal gatherers.

Trifed has also roped in institutions such as IIT-Kanpur, Art of Living-Bengaluru, Tata Institute of Social Sciences-Mumbai, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences-Bhubaneswar, Vivekananda Kendra-Tamil Nadu, SRIJAN-Rajasthan, for conducting the training programmes in Chhatisgarh, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan.

“Tech for Tribals is a unique program to make tribals of India ‘Aatmanirbhar’, focussing to bridge the gap between tribal entrepreneurs and urban markets,” Pravir Krishna, Managing Director, Trifed, said at a function to launch the initiative.

In a bid to promote minor forest produce, the government had launched an initiative to market it and develop a value chain during the lockdown period.

“The Van Dhan tribal start-ups, a component of the same scheme, has emerged as a source of employment generation for tribal gatherers and forest dwellers and the home-bound tribal artisans,” Krishna said.

The ‘Tech to Tribals’ initiative began on Tuesday with the training of tribals from Chhatisgarh in different facets of micro-enterprise creation, management and functioning.

“The training module has been developed by IIT, Kanpur and will be disseminated among beneficiaries in a phased manner through various modes like online lectures and training, online activities and will gradually move to face to face interactions in classrooms, practical, onsite visits and exposure visits,” a Tribal Affairs Ministry statement said.