In the weaving hamlet of Mangalagiri, about 30 kilometres from Vijayawada, a 58-year-old weaver named Suresh spends nine hours a day on a pit loom producing cotton sarees with the distinctive nizam border his family has woven for three generations. He earns approximately ₹8,000 per month — and until last year, his only reliable buyer was a cooperative showroom most people under 40 have never visited. That cooperative is APCO, and after seven decades of operating almost exclusively through brick-and-mortar retail, it has finally launched an e-commerce portal.
Why a 73-Year-Old Cooperative Going Digital Matters
The story of APCO’s digital leap is not simply a technology upgrade. It is a stress test for India’s entire handloom cooperative infrastructure. The country has approximately 31.5 lakh handloom weaver households, according to the Fourth All India Handloom Census, and a significant share of them depend on state-level cooperative societies for market access. When the oldest and largest among these societies struggles to sell online, it tells us something uncomfortable about how cooperatives have been structured — and how urgently they need to change.
I have been tracking India’s cooperative handloom ecosystem for years now, and APCO’s journey is one of the most revealing case studies in the sector.
Born From a Post-Independence Crisis
The Andhra Pradesh State Handloom Weavers Cooperative Society — universally known as APCO — was registered in 1953, just six years after Independence. The context matters. Handloom weavers across the Deccan were being decimated by mill-produced cloth flooding local markets. Master weavers controlled pricing, and individual artisans had zero bargaining power.
APCO was created as an apex cooperative to federate primary weaver cooperatives across what was then Andhra State (before the formation of the larger Andhra Pradesh in 1956). Its founding mandate was straightforward: procure yarn at subsidised rates, distribute it to affiliated primary societies, buy back finished fabric at pre-agreed prices, and sell through its own retail network. The model eliminated the middleman — at least on paper.
By the 1970s, APCO operated over 40 showrooms across South India, selling Mangalagiri cottons, Uppada jamdani silks, Venkatagiri sarees, and Chirala handlooms. For decades, an APCO showroom was where middle-class families bought wedding sarees and festival dhotis. The brand carried genuine trust.
How APCO Actually Works in 2026
Today, APCO functions as a three-tier structure. At the base sit roughly 500 primary handloom weavers’ cooperative societies (PHWCS) spread across Andhra Pradesh and parts of Telangana. These societies aggregate individual weavers — typically between 50 and 300 members each. The primary societies supply finished handloom products to APCO, which handles branding, quality inspection, warehousing, and retail.
Revenue flows back through a combination of piece-rate payments to weavers and a small margin retained by the primary societies for operational costs. APCO’s annual turnover has hovered around ₹150–200 crore in recent years, though exact figures fluctuate based on government procurement orders and festival-season demand.
| Parameter | Details |
|---|---|
| Year Established | 1953 |
| Headquarters | Hyderabad |
| Affiliated Primary Societies | ~500 |
| Estimated Weaver Families Covered | ~80,000 |
| Retail Showrooms | 40+ across South India |
| Estimated Annual Turnover | ₹150–200 crore |
| Key Products | Mangalagiri, Uppada, Venkatagiri, Chirala |
| E-commerce Launch | 2026–2026 |
Weavers receive yarn — often cotton 80s or 100s count — at subsidised rates through the National Handloom Mission and state government schemes. APCO also channels NCDC loans to primary societies for loom upgrades. The support structure exists, but the market side has been the persistent weak link.
What Has Been Broken for Years
I will be blunt: APCO’s showrooms feel frozen in time. Walk into one and you will find sarees folded on steel shelves, lit by fluorescent tubes, with minimal product labelling or visual merchandising. Compare this to private handloom brands like Fabindia or Raw Mango, which sell similar weaves at three to five times the price — but in curated, aspirational retail environments.
The bigger structural issue is governance. APCO, like many state-level cooperative apex bodies, has faced periods of government-appointed administrators replacing elected boards. Political interference in procurement pricing, staffing decisions, and showroom locations has been well-documented in legislative committee reports. When leadership changes every time the state government does, long-term strategy becomes impossible.
Competition from powerloom imitations is another bleeding wound. Estimates suggest that over 60% of fabric sold as “handloom” in Indian markets is actually powerloom, undercutting genuine cooperatives on price. The Handloom Mark certification exists, but enforcement remains thin.
The Digital Bet — and What It Is Up Against
APCO’s e-commerce portal, launched with support from the state IT department, allows customers to browse and purchase sarees, dress materials, and home textiles directly. The portal reportedly processed approximately ₹1.5 crore in orders within its first few months — modest, but meaningful for an institution that had never sold a single product online.
The comparison worth watching is Kerala’s Hantex, another state handloom cooperative that went online earlier and has reported growing digital revenues year on year. Hantex invested heavily in product photography, size guides, and return policies — the mundane operational details that determine whether an online store actually converts browsers into buyers. APCO will need to match or exceed that standard. Internationally, cooperatives like Italy’s Consorzio Promozione Filiera Tessile have shown that heritage textiles can command premium prices online, but only with serious investment in storytelling and brand identity.
What the Next Five Years Could Look Like
The Ministry of Cooperation, reconstituted under its current mandate, has signalled that digitising cooperative retail is a priority. NABARD‘s handloom vertical has also been piloting digital payment integration at primary society level, which could eventually allow weavers to receive real-time payment confirmations when their products sell online.
Under PM Vishwakarma and related artisan-support schemes, there is also new funding available for skill upgrades — particularly in natural dyeing and contemporary design adaptation, which are precisely the product categories that perform well on e-commerce platforms. If APCO can combine its GI-tagged weaves with modern design collaborations and a functional digital storefront, estimates suggest its online channel alone could contribute ₹30–50 crore annually within five years.
But that “if” carries enormous weight. Without governance reform, professional management hiring, and genuine investment in digital marketing, the portal risks becoming another underused government website.
Back at the Loom in Mangalagiri
Suresh, the weaver I mentioned at the start, told a local reporter last year that he had heard about APCO going online but had never seen the website himself. He does not own a smartphone. His son, who works in a Vijayawada textile shop, showed it to him once. The saree Suresh weaves over three days sells on the portal for approximately ₹2,400. He receives about ₹900 for his labour. The gap between what the customer pays and what the weaver earns remains the central question of India’s handloom cooperative movement — digital or not.
If you care about the survival of Indian handloom traditions, I would urge you to explore APCO’s portal, buy directly from cooperative sources, and keep demanding transparency in how weaver incomes are structured. The loom is still running. The question is whether the institution around it can finally catch up.