About us

‘Gestures’ is an independent, community livelihoods support initiative that provides a platform for marginalised and resource-poor communities in rural and urban India to sell their handmade, handcrafted and handloom products. In addition to the community-made products, we have a small section of products by Friends of Gestures.

Gestures is an effort to create eco-friendly, people-centric and sustainability footprints from the producer to the consumer.

Gestures was initiated by a not-for-profit organisation, Kriti: a development praxis and communication team which has been training and handholding many of the producer groups for more than two decades, through several social and skill-based interventions.

Gestures products are priced on the principles of fair trade, ethical production, and a violence-free production model, to suit the pocket of the ordinary citizen so that s/he can replace toxic and non-sustainable products with sustainable ones both, for daily use and gifting!

We are based out of New Delhi, Mumbai and Dehradun.

Become a sustainable consumer and directly contribute to local producer livelihoods and small enterprises that care for the planet Earth.

Ecofriendly & funky tote bags & wallets in cloth, canvas & jute for daily & special occasions, by street children & youth in Punjab and Haryana.
Colourful handmade & recycled paper stationary, gift & wine bags, shagun envelopes & notebooks by disabled youth in Delhi & Haryana.
Natural Holi colours made of flowers, petals, herbs and leaves with corn-starch and rice flour base by disabled young adults in Delhi and Haryana, and women in Madhya Pradesh; with turmeric base in Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Handcrafted jewellery & key rings for you & your kids, by poor slum women in Delhi & Punjab; artisans in Rajasthan and more.
Handwoven & handknitted woollen shawls, stoles, mufflers & mittens by rural women in the upper Himalayan region, making you cosy & confortable in the cold.
Handknitted and handmade toys by rural women in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand
Embroidered khadi and mangalgiri cotton kurtas for style & comfort, made by rural women in Haryana.
Handloom cotton sarees & dupattas by tribal women & weaver families in U.P., Odisha & West Bengal to make a sustainable fashion statement
Pure cotton stoles that feel sensual & beautiful, by traditional, handloom weavers in Barabanki district of U.P.
Natural, chemical free & freshly fragrant soaps made by women in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand; Delhi and Jharkhand
Natural herb & flower essential and diffuser oils for your body & soul, made by marginalised women in Jharkhand.
Pure handrolled incense sticks made by communities in the upper Himalayan region of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as Delhi
Handcrafted ceramic home essentials made by dropout young adults in Maharashtra.
and the list will continue to expand...

Note: As our previous website portal crashed due to the portal not able to work from home when the 2020 Lockdown began, here we are with a newly reconstructed website, work in progress. With photographs and inventory of products in stock, and a two member team and volunteers off and on, this is a new beginning for us!

Committed to the community producers and artisans who need our sales support most at this time, we hope many friends, old and new, will make advance purchases and beyond towards building sustainable livelihoods across resource poor rural and urban India.