Indian Handicrafts and Gifts Fair (IHGF) was held in New Delhi, February 23 to 27, 2018.
More than 500 buyers from 111 countries and domestic volume retail buyers visited the show to source home, lifestyle, fashion and textile products during the five day extravaganza.
Major Indian retail/online brands Amazon, Furniture Walla, Pepperfry, Good Earth, Archies, Fabindia, Flipkart, Accenture, H&M visited the show and placed orders. This became one of the motivating factors for those exhibitors who had shown their interest for retail sale during the show.
The Ajay Shankar memorial awards for the best design and display stand in the category of houseware, table, kitchen and hotelware, fashion jewelry and accessories, furniture hardware and home accessories, home textiles, furnishing and floor coverings, lamp lighting and accessories and decorative and festive décor were distributed. In each category gold, silver and bronze trophies were given.
The fair is held twice a year. Theme pavilions of NER, Jodhpur and J&K remained one of the highlights of the fair as exquisite crafts of these states attracted many buyers to visit these theme pavilions. The fair has become a major marketing platform to boost exports of small and medium entrepreneurs of the handicraft sector.
Maximum buyers were from the US, UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, France and China.
Handicraft exports during 1994-95 when the fair initiated were Rs 3159 crores and reached Rs 24,000 crores in 2016-17.
