The passion came from an intuitive, unexplainable draw from the thread. The pain emanated from the fact that over and over again, the weavers were repeating the same designs and their artisanship was falling short of art; as long as the buyer, seller, the intermediaries and the workers made some money, no one questioned why design should not question pattern. Dinesh started asking the weavers to weave his designs. Then he took them to his buyers. In 1985, a chance introduction to an Italian architect got him thinking.

“Westerners have so much beautiful fabric, huge amounts. I asked myself, why can’t we do it? They do not have monopoly on good taste. Let me find out how they do it, I told myself.

That is when I realised that it is all about technology and application. You had to apply design through technology. I came back and started building the technology infrastructure to scale-up great design. I was criticised by fellow traders as mad. I told everyone, this is what I want to do and this is what I will do.”