Our Mission
One Platform. Three Transformations.
AI-verified product listings cross-checked with the DPIIT registry. Every product you buy is authentic, and every rupee goes directly to the artisan.
Digital wallets, Artisan Credit Scores, microloans, and sachet insurance — financial tools built specifically for women in GI value chains.
A RAG chatbot trained on 478 GI products and 2,500 survey responses. Ask it anything about Indian crafts, regions, or artisan stories.
When a woman artisan earns her first digital payment, she doesn't just gain income — she gains identity, visibility, and power.
About the Founder
I'm Garima Awasthi
"I believe the hands creating India's heritage deserve global recognition, financial independence, and access to modern digital tools."
I'm a PhD researcher, author, and women empowerment advocate at the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Patna My research combines FinTech, women empowerment, and GI-tagged products to explore how traditional women artisans can grow in the digital economy.
Our Story
A Tuesday in Jitwarpur
It was a Tuesday afternoon in JITWARPUR village, Bihar.
A woman named Sunita was painting. Bamboo brush. Kohl-black ink. A fish becoming a lotus becoming something I had no word for — something her mother taught her, and her mother's mother before that.
She painted for eight hours.
The man who comes every Tuesday handed her ₹150.
She said thank you.
I sat there after he left. I knew — because I had done the research — that the same painting would sell in Delhi for ₹2,000. In London for ₹8,000. I knew Sunita would never find this out. That nobody had told her. That nobody was going to.
I drove home that night.
I could not sleep.
My name is Garima Awasthi.
I spent four years travelling across 16 states of India — sitting in the homes of women who weave, paint, embroider and sculpt India's most extraordinary things. I listened to 2,500 of them. I wrote their data into a research paper at IIT Patna. It got published. It was cited. It sat in a journal.
And Sunita still earned ₹150.
So I stopped writing about the problem.
I built the answer.
KalaStree is that answer.
Not a marketplace. A door that did not exist before.
A door where a woman walks through and finds her name on her product. Her village on the tag. Her money — the full amount, the real amount — in her own account. The same day.
No middleman. No Tuesday man. No ₹150.
I did not plan to build a company.
I planned to write a thesis.
But 2,500 women trusted me with their truth.
And a thesis felt like a very small thing to do with that.
Garima Awasthi
Founder, KalaStree — Heritage by Her
PhD Scholar, IIT Patna · Springer LNNS Author
The woman who made India beautiful deserves to know what that is worth.
KalaStree exists until she does.
In Loving Memory
Late Shri S.B. Sharma
"Every word I write, every woman's story I tell, every step I take — I take it hoping you are watching, and that it makes you proud."
— Garima, your daughter-in-law, with all her love.
Research Enquiries & Collaborations
Researcher, journalist, NGO, policymaker, or craftsperson — every conversation about women's heritage and digital empowerment matters.