About Us
Varnam Craft Collective is a multi-award winning social enterprise that has been working with artisans in Channapatna for over a decade. Our innovation in design has won us several awards. Over the past few years, our work has also extended to other crafts clusters across India from Kashmir to Karnataka. Today we work with over 13 craft clusters across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Delhi, UP, Kashmir, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Varnam has been providing sustainable livelihoods on a consistent basis to artisan groups. Today our work impacts more than 300 artisan families directly at a grassroots level.
Varnam was founded in 2011, during a visit to Channapatna. Starting from Karthik's small flat in cooke town, to the ground floor of his home in Bangalore, the first store started in 2012 from the basement of Mistry Architects. Today Varnam has four stores, in Indiranagar and Jayanagar at Bangalore, Gokulam at Mysore and Sangolda at Goa.
KARTHIK VAIDYANATHAN ~ FOUNDER / PRINCIPAL DESIGNER
Born in Devakottai, Chettinad and raised in Mumbai, Karthik moved to Bangalore in 2003. Over the years, he has worked across diverse fields—handling A&R at Sony Music, heading programming at Radio City and WorldSpace, exploring Marketing & design at Tanishq and communication design at ACT Fibernet.
An Engineer and MBA in Marketing from Mumbai, with no formal design training, his passion for craft and design was nurtured by the creative legacy of his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother – all of whom excelled in the creative art and crafts. This journey back to his roots in Chettinad led to the founding of Varnam Craft Collective, a social enterprise reimagining Indian crafts through design.
GEETA DIPALI - DIRECTOR
Geeta was born and raised in Bombay and trained as an architect, later practising as an interior designer, teaching architecture, and writing an interior design column for Property Times. She also leads an NGO focused on cancer awareness and care. With a core strength in organisation building and operations, she played a key role at Fractal Ink in scaling a seven-member boutique into one of India’s largest digital experience design studios by adding marquee clients, expanding capabilities, and remaining profitable at every stage.
At Varnam Craft Collective, Geeta’s mandate is to scale the organisation commercially and operationally while staying true to its craft-first ethos, strengthening retail and partnerships, sharpening operations and finance, and building teams and systems that help artisans thrive. Grounded in her architecture and interiors background, she brings a deep sensitivity to materials, process, proportion, and the maker’s hand, focusing on creating the right conditions for both the work and the craftspeople behind it to reach wider markets with integrity.
HEMANT SUTHAR ~ ADVISOR
Hemant Suthar is a graduate of the National Institute of Design and the founder of Fractal Ink, a pioneering digital design studio established in 1997. Fractal Ink created several of India’s early digital firsts and grew into one of the country’s largest experience design studios before being acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network in 2016.
Since then, he has focused on contributing to the design ecosystem as an advisor to educational institutions and the Association of Designers in India (ADI), where he served as President from 2021 to 2023. He is also a Director at DesignUp Conference, India’s leading design-in-technology conference.
Deeply shaped by his years at NID, Hemant’s work is informed by exposure to India’s craft traditions, field-based learning, and strong design communities. This perspective underpins Varnam’s approach—rooted in respect for craft, continuity of knowledge, and thoughtful contemporary interpretation.