Bangles, Ajrak and Embroidery: Meeting the Women Who Power Hyderabad’s Economy

If you walk through the bazaars of Hyderabad on a weekday morning, the sound is the same one it has been for two centuries: the chime of glass bangles, the rhythmic stamp of a wooden block onto Ajrak fabric, the click of an embroidery needle against a wooden hoop. These are the city’s quietest industries — and its most resilient.

At Justajoo Foundation, much of our livelihoods work is built around the women who keep these industries alive. They are bangle makers in the old city, Ajrak printers in Bhit Shah, embroiderers in Tando Allahyar and Mirpurkhas. Most are self-taught, second- or third-generation craftspeople. Almost all of them are the primary earners in their households.

Skills training, micro-grants, market access

Our livelihoods program runs three parallel tracks:

1. Skills training — workshops on quality control, dye-fastness, packaging, and pricing. Held in partnership with master craftswomen, in the artisans’ own languages.
2. Micro-grants — small, no-interest grants to buy a new loom, replace a printing block, or stock raw materials at fair-price wholesalers instead of paying middlemen.
3. Market access — connecting artisans with retailers, exhibitions and government procurement, including federal recognition of Hyderabad’s crafts as cultural heritage.

A meeting that mattered

In October 2024, our chairperson Sadaf Raza Warraich — who is also Senior Vice President of the Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry Hyderabad and Founder President of WCCI Mirpurkhas — met Federal Minister for Commerce Jam Kamal Khan. She presented him with Sindhi Ajrak and a traditional headwear piece, and pitched Hyderabad’s women’s crafts for federal support.

“Pakistani women are very hardworking and proving their potential in every sphere of life.”

— Sadaf Raza Warraich, October 2024

That meeting was not symbolic. Federal recognition of artisan crafts unlocks export support, exhibition slots, GI (geographic indication) protection, and a different conversation with the women who make these goods — one in which they are producers, not subjects.

How to help

If you run a business that procures fabric, gifts or apparel — buy from Hyderabad’s women. If you are a donor — fund a micro-grant or a workshop. If you are a designer — co-create. Email us and we’ll connect you with the right collective.