“When I make something with my own hands, I put a part of my soul in that product,” says Saai Venkat who runs Soulfulsaai, an enterprise that sells handcrafted products.

A former fashion editor, after Saai quit her job, she began to pursue her interest in handicrafts, which runs in her family. With the knowledge she had thanks to her degree in Textile and Clothing from Mumbai’s Nirmala Niketan, and after several months of surfing the net and getting a pulse of the market, Saai began her enterprise and named it after her twitter handle (#soulfulsaai). “I started with hair accessories and began selling these on the international site etsy.com. Slowly, after feedback from the Indian sites that stocked my products, I realised that there is a greater demand for jewellery and started making such products as well,” says Saai.