Rakhi sales: Traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Wednesday said rakhis worth approximately Rs 12,000 crore were sold this year across the country. The rakhis and raw materials for rakhis were made in India instead of imported from China, CAIT said.
“This is the first year after Covid when consumers flocked to the markets across the country to buy rakhis without fear of any disease due to which all previous records have been broken. Along with this, the sale of sweets, gift items, clothes, and FMCG items for gifting has also been estimated to be around Rs 5,000 crore,” CAIT National President BC Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said in a statement.
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Rs 12,000 crore sales this year grew from around Rs 3,000 crore in 2018, of which only 7 per cent were through online channels while the rest were from offline or physical retail markets. Before Covid, in 2019, the sales stood at around Rs 3,500 crore while Rs 5,000 crore business was achieved in 2020 followed by Rs 6,000 crore in 2021 and Rs 7,000 crore last year, said Bhartia and Khandelwal. Sales in 2023 registered 71 per cent growth from the previous year.
Among prominent types of rakhis, Chandrayaan rakhi and G-20’s Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam rakhis were also made by traders apart from rakhis made with the famous products of different cities such as Kosa rakhi of Chhattisgarh, Jute rakhi of Kolkata, Silk rakhi of Mumbai, Khadi rakhi made in Nagpur, Sanganeri Kala rakhi of Jaipur, Woolen rakhi of Satna, Madhya Pradesh, and more.
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Earlier this month, CAIT had also estimated Diwali sales this year to be around Rs 3 lakh crore while it urged traders to boycott Chinese goods this festive season in order to cost China Rs 1 lakh crore of trade in terms of non-import of festive and other goods by traders and importers. The traders’ body earlier this year had estimated Holi sales of around Rs 25,000 crore, up by approximately 25 per cent from the previous year’s sales.