🧐 Understanding the Human Hair Trade
India is in a hairy place when it comes to hair trade. We have a monopoly in raw materials but are still lagging behind China. Here's how.
POV: What You'll be Doing After You Read/Listen to This Article
It's a regular day. You are combing your hair and you notice that more than a few strands of hair fall out. But instead of worrying about balding, you rejoice!
That's because once you read our article, you'll know exactly how valuable each strand of hair is.
So, let's dive deep into the glitzy and glamorous and at the same time dark and dingy world of hair trade.
💇♀️ The Price Tag on Your Hair
Surprisingly, the hair on your head has multiple uses: like making calligraphy brushes, soaking up oil spills and even making bread-based products.
But its biggest use case is obviously wigs.
The demand for wigs around the world is so large that in 2021 the business was worth $6.3 billion! And this is set to grow to $10 billion by 2023.
Have you ever wondered where these wigs come from? How are they made?
Well, most of the wigs around the world, whether they are on Shakira's head or on the Kardashians' scalp, come from India.
Well, at least the hair is from India.
India is the number one exporter of human hair in the world.
And that's all thanks to
Our population
Our devotion. Huh?
Yes, the majority of the hair that we export comes from temples. Especially the Venkateshwara temple famously known as Tirupati Balaji situated in Andhra Pradesh.
The temple shaves over 12 million heads a year which generates on an average a revenue of $17 million for the religious institution. But this differs from year to year: in 2013 it earned $27 million by shaving heads!
It even has a special warehouse, where sheared locks are sorted and sold every few months in an online auction. The price for hair from Tirupati can be as high as Rs 33,000 (This money is used to distribute prasad to devotees and for other charity purposes).
The reason this hair is so high-priced is because it is remy hair. Huh?
Remy hair simply means hair that is collected in a way all hair strands stay aligned in the natural direction as it has been grown. Remy hair maintains the natural texture pattern of the hair.
There’s a non-remy category as well where hair is collected from floors of houses and beauty parlours and later tied together. This source of collection does not maintain natural texture patterns and hence is considered of a poor quality.
The best and the most high quality wigs can only be made from remy hair, which is why it is so expensive.
Non-remy hair usually sells for Rs. 8,000-Rs. 12,000 per kg depending on the quality of the hair.
Now, because India can sell a lot of remy hair as compared to other countries, we are exporting $750 million worth of human hair.
But, this number could easily be as high as $2 billion. So, what's stopping us?
Believe it or not, once again the villain in our story is China.
🇨🇳 The China Problems
China is impacting our hair industry in more than one way.
First, there is smuggling. Chinese traders enter our markets and source hair directly through hawkers that collect hair from homes and beauty parlours. These hawkers are willing to give them this hair because they can often pay higher (these traders are smuggling hair so they don't have to pay an import duty; some of the money they save this way goes to the hawkers).
Indian exporters also smuggle hair to China to escape the 28% import duty that China imposes. Plus, smuggling some hair also allows them to show lower earnings on their books, helping them save income tax.
Thanks to this smuggling business, India loses Rs. 2,500 crores in revenue and countless jobs. Worst of all, we lose precious dollars. The smuggling spree has reportedly caused India a loss of 17% of its total exports.
And this smuggling is also stopping our wig industry from booming. Right now, India mainly sells raw hair. We do make some wigs, but because so much hair is being smuggled out, we don't have enough raw material to gain expertise or make wigs out of.
So, some measures need to be taken to prevent smuggling so that our hair industry can grow.
The government has already taken a step in this direction by making it mandatory for hair exporters to obtain a licence for their trade.
But stricter measures need to come in. The government should also promote this industry through PLI schemes which would lead to more people setting up factories and hair processing centres, something that is direly needed to give a boost to our wig manufacturing sector.
However, now there is a new threat looming for this industry: Lab-grown hair. Scientists have figured out how to create and 3-D print human hair in labs. If this tech takes off and becomes cheap, it could end the human hair industry.
But until that day comes, we need to position ourselves as the leading manufacturer of processed hair, because even this lab-grown hair will need to be woven into wigs.
This is the one sector where we have a distinct advantage to China. Still, we are losing out to it. The country just seems to be the root of all issues for our hair industry (Pun intended).
So, we need to make new policies and promote this niche which is often ignored. Maybe such businesses are the key to helping India become a net exporter.
This article was researched and written by our intern Muskan Gupta!
⚡In a line: India has a distinct advantage over the world when it comes to hair trade but we're still losing out to China thanks to illegal trade.
💡Quick question: Do you think it is ethical to sell hair that devotees donate in the temples?
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