Samar Udawat
dEZSIGN student trying to explore the world
New to Contra
Samar is building their profile!
Toran (https://hancrafttoran.netlify.app) is a handcraft discovery and commerce platform that connects Gen Z consumers directly with India's traditional artisans, starting with Rajasthan's leather craftsmen and expanding into the full spectrum of Indian handcraft traditions.
The name Toran comes from the decorative door hangings strung across homes and temples across Rajasthan and Gujarat objects made by hand, passed down through generations, hung at thresholds as a symbol of welcome and cultural identity. The brand borrows that symbolism intentionally: Toran is a doorway between maker and buyer, between ancient craft and modern culture, between India's artisan villages and a generation of consumers who are hungry for things that feel real.
India's artisan economy is one of the largest in the world over 7 million craft workers producing work of extraordinary skill and cultural depth. Yet most of that work reaches the consumer either through exploitative middlemen who strip the artisan of fair wages, or through dusty government emporiums that make the craft feel like a relic rather than something desirable.
Meanwhile, Gen Z is the most values-driven consumer generation in history. They are actively rejecting fast fashion. They want to know where things come from. They are interested in culture, in craft, in things with meaning but no platform has ever spoken to them in their language about Indian handcraft. Toran exists in that gap.
Most craft platforms are built for the buyer of a previous generation older, nostalgic, already culturally connected to the craft. Toran is built for someone who may have never held a block-printed dupatta or a hand-stitched leather wallet, but who, if shown the right story in the right way, would choose it over anything mass-produced.
Toran doesn't dress the craft up. It doesn't make it "trendy" by stripping away its identity. It makes the craft itself the cool thing by presenting it with the same visual seriousness and cultural confidence that streetwear or luxury brands use to make their products desirable.
The artisan is not a footnote. The artisan is the brand.
Phase one is Rajasthan specifically leather work. Bags, wallets, journal covers, and accessories made using traditional Rajasthani leather techniques. This is the anchor category: tactile, wearable, everyday-use objects that fit naturally into a Gen Z wardrobe and lifestyle.
From there, Toran expands craft by craft, region by region always led by story, always rooted in the maker.
Every piece on Toran was made by someone whose name you'll know, in a place you can find on a map, using skills that took years to learn. That's not a marketing line. That's the only way we work.
sample frontend: https://hancrafttoran.netlify.app
still working on it
0
44
3d experiment
0
32