Crafted with Confidence

High in the Nilgiris, rag dolls stitched together from textile waste are anchoring local livelihoods and reimagining childhoods

- Bunty Thoidingjam

Ten-year-old Nilah wears her hair in two thick braids. Dressed in a bright ikat print, she is about to set out to explore her family's farm at the edge of the Nilgiris shola forest.

But Nilah is no ordinary child. She is a hand-stitched rag doll, crafted from scraps of fabric. Her family, also assembled from natural materials and dressed in kasavu saris and mundus, joins her on this journey.

Nilah and her friends and family form the cast of a story inspired by Indian lives and cultural heritage. All of them are made from unused textile surplus, stitched by local women in the Nilgiris. Behind the idea are Suhas Ramegowda and his wife Sunita, two former Chennai-based corporate professionals, who moved to the hills in 2017 in search of a slower and more meaningful life.

In 2019, the duo established the Indian Yards Foundation in Ooty, a social enterprise to upskill women from rural and indigenous communities in the Nilgiris through crafts. The Good Doll was established in 2023 as a for-profit initiative to support the foundation’s efforts. The duo started off with a small batch of fabric dolls, unsure if the idea would take off.

Over the next two years, they were awarded grants amounting to ₹25 lakh from the startup incubator Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and the Tamil Nadu Startup and Innovation Mission, and raised ₹1 crore in equity through high net-worth individuals and social-impact funds Rainmatter and Villgro. On Season 4 of the reality show Shark Tank India, the startup secured another ₹1 crore.