Santu Tekam lives in Patangarh, a small town in Madhya Pradesh where Gond tribal painting is as ordinary as farming. In his village of about 1,000 people, nearly 100 practise the art. Some are still learning. His wife helps him with the painting. His parents tend to their fields.

For years, the income from his craft was seasonal and uncertain. The monsoon meant no painting. Galleries came and went. During COVID, the work dried up entirely.

“During COVID, when I did not have any work, Didi gave me work,” he says. “Now, I get regular work throughout the year. On an average, I earn Rs 10,000 to 30,000 a month. More people recognise our art these days.”

That ‘Didi’ is Shambhavi Pandey, the founder of Folkstroke — a women-led artisanal brand from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, that has spent the last six years trying to answer a question most people in the craft world had stopped asking: why does traditional Indian art so rarely make it into people's everyday lives?

Art that nobody took home

Shambhavi grew up moving. As the daughter of an Army officer, she lived across West Bengal, Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, and Punjab, among other states. Each place left something behind. West Bengal was colour. Manipur was craft. Punjab and J&K were people — their warmth, their way of telling stories.

Adapting was not a skill she developed. It became her nature.

“My sensitivity to various cultures and people helped me in college and my workplace. I could get along with almost anyone by the time I was in middle school. I had no hang-ups,” she says.

That ease with people, with difference, with walking into unfamiliar rooms — it would matter more than she knew.

Shambhavi graduated from Sophia Girls College, Ajmer, and went on to complete an MA in human resources management from the Faculty of Social Work, MS University, Vadodara. She built a career as an HR professional, managing diverse workforces of up to 3,000 employees across international geographies. She won the ‘Simply Excellent – Platinum’ award of excellence during her tenure at AC Nielsen.

But something was missing.

“I was looking for an identity beyond a corporate role. I would not have wanted to have retired as the VP of a company. I wanted to do something grounded in purpose,” she says.

Her first attempt was a health-tech startup called Healted Tech, incubated and funded by IIT Kanpur, which offered second medical opinions to patients in remote villages of Chhattisgarh. Her husband Ritam, a management professional, now runs Healted. The venture is stable.

Shambhavi moved on to the question she kept returning to.

Traditional Indian folk art existed in abundance. It was alive, skilled, and extraordinary. It was also mostly sitting on gallery walls, in craft fairs, in the category of ‘things to admire and move on from.’

“I realised that there is a need to contemporise traditional Indian folk art such that it suits modern tastes and regains its lost lustre,” she says. “That is why I set up a venture to create decor products which are hand-painted in traditional Indian folk art but at the same time are quirky, aesthetic and modern.”

In 2019, she began working with artisans through a small proprietorship. The first artisan she worked with was a teenager. By November 2021, the venture was registered as a private limited company — Hasthkala Curators — with Folkstroke as its trademarked........

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