About

Why Telugu Treasures?

It started with a question I couldn't shake.

I was volunteering at a temple stall in Atlanta, helping sell decorative pieces of Hindu deities, when a customer picked up a figurine and turned it over. "Made in China," she read aloud. "Don't we have our own arts?" 

She was right. And I didn't have a good answer.

That moment stayed with me. In February 2024, I started researching Indian craft traditions and stumbled upon something I had never heard of before — Etikoppaka, a centuries-old wooden toy tradition from Andhra Pradesh, using lac dyes and forest wood, made entirely by hand. I had grown up knowing the name Kondapalli, but only vaguely. Now I was discovering a whole world of living, breathing craft that most of us in the diaspora had simply lost touch with.

Telugu Treasures was born from that curiosity — and from a conviction that these beautiful, GI-tagged, artisan-made pieces deserve a place in our homes, our festivals, and our children's hands. Not as novelties, but as the treasures they truly are.

From Curiosity to Community

I brought my idea to the temple first. Could we source directly from these artisans instead? But for a busy temple organization, navigating overseas suppliers wasn't practical — and I completely understood. So I decided to go see for myself.

In June 2024, I made a special family trip to Vizag — the closest city to Etikoppaka — and drove out to the village. It is exactly what it sounds like: one road, a handful of homes, small shops carrying the work of generations of artisan families. I walked into one of them and started picking pieces. The owner watched me with polite skepticism — customers like me, placing orders of that size, were not something he was used to.

I carried everything back to Hyderabad myself, got it packed, and shipped it home.
On that same trip I visited Kondapalli. I'll be honest — I didn't fully understand the difference between the two arts yet. I bought from a roadside store, paid more than I should have, and didn't know it at the time. But I knew one thing with complete certainty: this art was beautiful, and people back home would love it. By July 2024, back in Atlanta, I was selling to friends out of my living room. Telugu Treasures had begun.

The Moment It Became Real

That first year was modest. Limited inventory, small sales, mostly friends. But I had one goal: to go back to the temple New Year stall — the very place where this journey had begun — and see if my instinct was right.

On January 1, 2025, I found out it was.

I sold out almost everything. Return gift orders started coming in. People wanted more. That was the moment I stopped thinking of this as a side project and started taking it seriously.
By February 2025 I was back in India — this time alone, more confident, and much wiser. In Kondapalli, I walked past the store that had overcharged me the first time and kept going. I found an actual manufacturer instead — someone who makes these pieces, not just sells them. That changed everything about the quality and the pricing.

I also stumbled upon a small artisan just starting out on their own. Their work wasn't perfect yet, but their heart was in it — and I bought from them anyway. Because that's also what this is about.

Building Something Real

With real orders came a real challenge: moving inventory at scale.

I built out the supply chain piece by piece. In Andhra Pradesh, I partnered with a woman-owned courier business in Vizag who became the backbone of the Etikoppaka side — artisans ship to her, she consolidates and ships to me. What started as my small orders turned out to be meaningful business for her too. That kind of mutual growth is exactly what Telugu Treasures is about.

In Kondapalli, I found a manufacturer who quoted me fairly from day one and has never given me a reason to doubt him. Reliable, honest, consistent — rare and precious in any supply chain.
On this side of the ocean, I found my people too. Local event organizers who were also building something, also figuring it out. I started doing events — Holi in March 2025, and then almost without a break through the spring, summer and fall across North Atlanta. Golu season was everything I hoped it would be.

On January 1, 2026, I went back to that same temple stall where this all began. Sold out again.
Two years in, Telugu Treasures had earned its place — in the community here, and with the artisans back home.

Why Direct to Source?

People often ask me — where do these pieces actually come from?

Most vendors source from distributors in larger cities. The art travels through many hands before it reaches you, and the artisan at the beginning of that chain sees very little of the value.
I do it differently. I go direct — to the villages, to the workshops, to the families who have practiced these crafts for generations. Etikoppaka. Kondapalli.  I watch them work, and I buy directly from them.

It matters for several reasons. It means the communities benefit directly. It means I can offer honest prices without inflated middlemen margins. And it means something harder to put into words — the look in an artisan's eyes when they hand you something they made with their own hands, and know it is going to a home that will truly value it.

That is what Telugu Treasures carries in every piece.

This is not just retail. It is a bridge — between ancient craft traditions and modern homes, between villages in Andhra Pradesh and living rooms around US.

A Heritage Worth Saving

There is something else I don't talk about enough.

These art forms are endangered. Not in a distant, abstract way — in a very real, very urgent way. The older generation of artisans is aging. The younger generation is not learning these crafts, because the economics don't work for them. Without intervention, without demand, without people who care enough to seek these pieces out — we could lose Etikoppaka, lose Kondapalli, lose these traditions entirely within a decade.

That thought keeps me going on the hard days.

Every piece that finds a home in a family's puja room, on a Golu setup or a child's playroom, is a small vote for keeping these arts alive. Every return gift order that puts a Kondapalli item in a hundred guests' hands is a hundred more people who now know this art exists.

The children growing up Indian-American deserve to know where they come from — not through textbooks, but through the weight of a hand-carved wooden toy, the shimmer of a lac-dyed doll, the story behind every brushstroke.

That is the real reason Telugu Treasures exists.

And it started because one customer picked up a figurine, read "Made in China," and asked a question I couldn't ignore.