A Living Heritage

The brand Kankatala is synonymous with heritage. Brinda Gill tells us how Kankatala’s exclusive hand-woven saris and the commitment of three generations of the family have been instrumental in preserving India’s traditional textile techniques.

- Brinda Gill

“Kankatala is involved with bringing carefully selected hand-woven saris to its consumers. The aim of the brand is to provide Indian women with authentic, one-of-a-kind saris,” says Anirudh Kankatala, Director, Kankatala. He speaks with pride of his family’s enduring involvement in the business of bringing hand-woven saris, sourced from weavers in different parts of the country, to customers for over eight decades! “With the management being passed on to three generations we have steadily evolved to mark our presence as a trusted sari brand. We have built a loyal customer base and generations of families have been shopping with Kankatala.”

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

The beginnings of Kankatala go back to the early 1940s when Shri Kankatala Appalaraju, Anirudh’s paternal grandfather, started working at his uncle’s cloth shop in Visakhapatnam. Kankatala Appalaraju, would take lengths of cloth and sell them at the railway platform to the British disembarking or passing by on the train. He then started moving around on a bicycle and carrying a bundle of saris and selling them door-to-door. The appreciation he received for the saris, inspired him to start a small store in the old city of Visakhapatnam in 1943.