dharavimarket.com

DharaviMarket.com is a for profit initiative aimed at making the skills of the squatter settlement more accessible to the middle/upper classes while providing the local, skilled craftsmen and artisans direct access to local and global markets. It aims at providing, world class, quality goods at cheap prices as one would directly buy from the manufacturers while giving the craftsmen a price worth their craft and effort.

It also aims to clear notions and misunderstandings about life in slums; slum dwellers are not criminals or beggars, they too have robust enterprising skills and intimate community life.

In the long run we would like to use this platform to voice slum dwellers’ right to life, adequate housing and livelihood as it is under constant threat due to sophisticated redevelopment policies and mindsets of a few influential authorities/citizens/builders that look at land as mere real estate asset and slum dwellers as pollutants and cheap labour.

The illiterate but skilled, hardworking, enterprising residents of Dharavi haven’t exploited the potential of the worldwide web, we thought we could initiate this for them and so we went ahead and did it!