New Delhi, July 26 (KNN) In a bid to boost traditional industries under its ambitious ‘One District One Product’ (ODOP) scheme, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Agityanath government is mulling to partner with Amazon with regard to global branding and marketing of traditional products.

While, UP has already signed a MoU with Amazon for showcasing Khadi over its online marketplace apart from training artisans, the states is talking to ecommerce giant for other traditional products .

The state is famous for product specific traditional industrial hubs across 75 districts viz. Varanasi (Banarasisilk sari), Bhadohi (carpet), Lucknow (chikan), Kanpur (leather goods), Agra (leather footwear), Aligarh (lock), Moradabad (brassware), Meerut (sports goods), Saharanpur (wooden products) etc.

Bhuvesh Kumar, UP Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Secretary told Business Standard that Amazon had already agreed to showcase traditional products representing 6 different districts.

Apart from this, the UP government is gearing up to host a mega ODOP Summit on August 10, 2018 which would be inaugurated by President Ram Nath Kovind.

The event is expected to give a major push to the scheme and boost MSMEs, which forms the state’s industrial backbone.

In order to promote the ODOP scheme the government is working on a multi-pronged strategy and for this a roadmap was being prepared to sew alliances with big shopping malls for branding and marketing of traditional products.

In first phase, the state would launch 1,000 ODOP retail outlets at strategic places such as railway stations.

Further, it plans to establish ODOP clusters at Ambedkar Nagar, Etawah, Gautam Budh Nagar, Hapur, Barabanki, Agra, Kanpur City, Kanpur Dehat, Hamirpur and Fatehpur.

Recently, UP MSME minister Satyadev Pachauri had said ODOP scheme had been conceptualized to reviving and giving wings to the state’s traditional industries and that the government was taking all steps to scale up units and generate self employment opportunities.

He noted ODOP would integrate 20 million workers with MSMEs.