How Varanasi businesses sell today
Craft and hospitality, both sold on trust and photographs
Varanasi sells two things to the rest of the world. One is craft: Banarasi sarees, silk, brassware and wooden work, moving through wholesalers, retail chains and export buyers. The other is hospitality, where hotels, guest houses and tour operators serve visitors arriving from across India and abroad. Both are conducted on WhatsApp, with photographs, voice notes and phone calls doing the work an email would do elsewhere.
The gap is always the same. Designs shown and rates quoted are scattered across personal chats, and enquiries that arrive at night are answered a day later, by which time the buyer or the traveller has decided elsewhere.
