The North Eastern states of India are hidden gems with their unique food, culture, ethnicity, climate and religion. One of these best kept secrets of the region are Eri silkworms. Over 95 percent of Eri silk are produced in this region due to the favourable climatic conditions. Rural women traditionally carry out the processing, spinning and weaving as part of their daily life. This silk flourished in a small village in Meghalaya with only one woman who was continuing with the beautiful art. This proved to be a golden opportunity for Muezart which decided to bring this traditional craft in front of the world.

The startup created a platform, whereby local artisans who rear and spin silk yarns were given exposure to other markets within India. This not only uplifted the standard of living of the artisans but also created a community to unite them and bring back the tradition. The staple length of this silk is smaller as compared to other silks, which makes it unique."Our main purpose is to engage with women artisans and manufacture and sell on an online platform. The yarns and fibres that we sell are for knitting, weaving, embroidery and other craftworks as well,"says Kevin Jyrwa, Head, Muezart.

Muezartis a unit of Chillibreeze Solution Private Limited which provides digital

services to a lot of multinational corporations spread mostly across North America and Europe. Founded in 2019, this e-commerce company is exploring the potential of undervalued resources that is characteristic to this region. The Covid-19 pandemic motivated several people to pick fibres based crafting activities such as knitting, crocheting and embroidery. This ultimately led to an increase in the need for a unique yarn & fibre manufacturing and selling company which utilizes Eri silk.

It is an environmentfriendly sustainable process as its production happens in a small village ecosystem with minimal use of resources

The Unique Eri Silk
"The Eri silk is a protein fibre and the whole ecosystem of producing it is natural. Also, the requirement to rear this silkworm is very small in terms of area. Moreover, the processing of cocoons is easy as it has short fibres and has an automatic open end. The by product is an empty cocoon which can be used for processing,"explains Kevin. Other properties of this unique silk include less water required for processing and its isothermal properties which provide coolness in summer and warmth in winter. Muezart uses 100 percent natural colours to dye Erisilk while spinning yarns. It is an environment friendly, sustainable process as its production happens in a small village ecosystem with minimal use of resources.

“There has been a lot of misconceptions especially in the northeast rural areas where they always look forward to government schemes. So we had to work towards building trust in terms of partnership activities which included running trust building campaigns,”says Kevin. The company is trying to revive the tradition by knitting, crocheting and introducing embroidery apart from weaving.

Expanding While Uplifting Livelihoods of Local Women
Armed with a team of nine hardworking individuals and 150 women from the villages of Meghalaya, Muezart has become a global provider.The marketing is done online on Amazon and in the last year, it has launched its website for India.

“In future, we want to be synonymous with eri silk. We believe that with the potential in northeast india and meghalaya we can do a lot more. When the impact is being experienced by our partners we would be a role model to other entrepreneurs in india,”concludes kevin.