About haat
India's marketplace,
to the world.
Hi, I'm Jay Agarwal. I built haat because India's makers deserved a better front door to the world than what existed.
The premise
A buyer in San Francisco wants a Banarasi shawl. A weaver in Varanasi has spent twelve weeks making one. Today, the path between them is broken in too many places — intermediaries, opaque pricing, surprise duties at delivery, no story behind the object.
haat is the path, rebuilt: every seller verified, every price all-inclusive, every story told honestly. The buyer pays one number. The weaver gets paid in INR, on time, while we handle the export back-office.
What we won't do
We won't run flash sales. We won't put countdown timers on products. We won't manufacture urgency. The work doesn't need it — and the brand voice India deserves is editorial, not frantic.
We won't claim every product is "exclusive" or "limited" when it isn't. We won't use stock photography of "rustic markets" to make handmade goods feel exotic. The makers aren't a backdrop.
The team
We're a small team spread across the globe — designers, engineers, an operations partner in Jaipur, and regional liaisons in textile clusters and craft towns who help us find the right makers. Small on purpose. The fewer people between a buyer's order and a seller's payout, the better the marketplace.
Where we are
Our primary office is in Jaipur, Rajasthan. We chose Jaipur because it sits at the crossroads of craft and commerce — block-printers, hand-loom weavers, blue-pottery studios, and lapidaries, all within a morning's drive. If you're ever in town, we'd love to host you for a workshop tour.
What's next
We're building in the open. Seller onboarding, the AI listing creator, the buyer browsing experience, the payments and logistics rails — each piece tested before the next ships. The marketplace opens fully when it's honest end-to-end, not a moment before.
If you make beautiful things in India, or if you're a buyer who has had it with the surprise-duty-at-delivery routine, you're who we're building this for.
— Jay Agarwal