Discover > Livelihoods:
5. Wool

Some of our earliest livelihood interventions were aimed at marketing sheep and camel wool and crafted woollens. India has one of the largest sheep populations in the world (around 74 million animals), and yet imports almost all of its wool. We estimate that 15-20% of the wool produced in the country is currently used, while the rest is discarded, indicating a large scope for the development of indigenous wool-based enterprises.

Most wool produced in India is of a coarse, short-staple variety, as opposed to the long-staple, fine wool imported from New Zealand, Turkey, Syria and elsewhere. As is the case across the world, Indian industry is increasingly geared towards using the latter, with little innovation in technology and design to take advantage of the wool produced in the country. We now primarily work through our partners to explore avenues by which uses and industrial demand for Indian wool might increase.

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