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Kavita Parmar (born May 12, 1972) is a Spanish entrepreneur and clothes designer actively engaged in preserving and promoting artisanal textile traditions. Through her brand, The IOU Project, Kavita Parmar seeks to empower both the artisan and the customer, giving authorship to highly skilled traditional crafts people and agency to customers, who thanks to state-of-the-art technologies can access relevant information regarding the manufacturing of each garment.

Life and career
Born in Gorakhpur, Kavita Parmar grew up between her native India, Canada and The United Kingdom.

In 1995, Kavita and her partner started Authentic Gear, with exclusive license for India of the children’s wear brand Osh Kosk B’Gosh. She also became a partner in Elanco Limited, a design and product sourcing company based in Hong Kong that manufactured apparel for large retailers worldwide. During those years she worked extensively with artisan communities in the region.

In 2000 she sold the business and move to Madrid with her husband and partner and, one year later, launched her own clothing label, Raasta, a women’s wear collection made using artisanal fabrics and techniques. Following its success, in 2005 she launched a second label, Suzie Wong, focussed on couture eveningwear.

In 2011, The IOU Project was launched as an e-commerce social networking platform that manufactures and retails one-of-a-kind handmade clothes through a traceable system enabled by new technologies. This disruptive initiative was born from the need to empower both the artisan and the consumer ; to promote a responsible way of consuming where the product bought is charged with meaning and value and, therefore, is less disposable. First and foremost, « the goal is for the artisans of the world to regain their dignity » by aknowledging the quality of their work and paying fair prices for it. Then is for the customer to have access to unique garments of the highest quality, traceable from the production of the textile to the manufacture of the piece. It is about turning « supply chains » into « prosperity chains ».

In 2008, she opened The IOU Story Store in the heart of Madrid. A workshop and store where the IOU Project developed to be the far-reaching endeavour, with cultural and educational purposes, it is today. A place where to aknowledge all the stories behind each piece of clothing : the stories of the fibers, the weavers, the tailors, the designers... A place where to find garments with Denomination of Origin, linked to specific and higly skilled artisans, to the soil, communities and cultural traditions they come from.

Honours
Kavita Parmar has been honoured in several occasions for her disruptive aproach to the fashion business. She has been awarded the United Nations System Staff College Leadership award in 2012 and the New York City Venture Fellow award, also in 2012. And is member of various mentor and advisory councils, such as the Labor, Trades and Crafts Council at the Fetzer Institute.