After success at home, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee's Biswa Bangla eyes global market

KOLKATA: Didi's brainchild clocks profit worth Rs 15 crore from seven stores in its first year, an average of Rs 2 crores from each of its stores.

According to principal secretary at the department of Micro and Small Scale Enterprise and Textile, government of West Bengal, Rajiva Sinha, the expansion is possible if international stores also market the brand's product. Presently participating in the London Design Festival, Biswa Bangla will come up with the first international store in Central London early 2016 and will pool in investments Rs 6 crores from the Department of MSME and Textile and Biswa Bangla's own funds.

A 1200 sq ft property, the London store would be run by the Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation Ltd. After participating at the London Design Festival earlier this week, Biswa Bangla plans to keep marketing the brand in England. “This will be followed by more brand building activity in collaboration with the Nehru Centre in London and the V&A Museum,“ said Sinha. “Ours is a touch and feel product and we are promoting the brand aggressively on all international platforms to make our global stores a hit. We have been participating in NABC events in Orlando, Houston, the Kunming fair in China and others too,“ he added.

Biswa Bangla is also in talks with interested franchisees to set up shop across the US.

Biswa Bangla is not just targeting new stores but also planning to increase the number of artisan's involved in the initiative. With a little over 7,000 artisans presently involved with Biswa Bangla, the idea is to increase the count to 70,000 in the next two years.

“While we have more than 5,000 products on our platter, we are working on some new ones as well.For instance, we are launching a Bengal Doll festival during the Pujas which will showcase 24 types of dolls from various parts of West Bengal. Many of them are extinct.We are also launching Bonoloukhi ghee from Shantiniketan, and are working on many other new products that has a heritage value like the Carmichael Rumal,“ said Partho Kar, chief consultant, Biswa Bangla.