Our Story
Rajashvi Jajodia
Founder
A storyteller at heart, Rajashvi has a keen eye for all things that narrate a chronicle. With a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, she’s a passionate artist by profession. While gaining a global perspective abroad, she continued to be fascinated by her Indian roots and culture back home.
Masaya is her canvas, where she brings together her two big loves, storytelling and art. It is also an attempt to build a community that can help keep the delicacy of the arts and crafts of India alive in an increasingly digital world. With Masaya, she wants to create a gender neutral and sustainable world for children. And when she’s not painting tales onto pieces for Masaya, she’s seen with a camera, hunting for more stories in the most unlikely places.
How the name Masaya was born?
MASAYA as a word has a lot of different meanings, the ones that resonated with me the most and I thought would resonate with people too are:
- In Amharic it means “leaving an impression” which is built around the brand ethos of Hand block printing - that literally leaves an impression on your fabric.
- Some could also relate it to a Messiah- A leader
- Someone also gave a unique meaning to Masaya calling it “Maa ka saya”- making it fitting to the little munchkins we cater to.
How is Masaya different?
Masaya was born when an opportunity to create something for a little one came to us, its growth emerged from a journey of trial and error. From the get go, Masaya established its core beliefs regarding its contribution to society. Making the world better for the little one step by step, day by day.
Through showcasing our products to people & changing them for the better, we started to understand our community, the ones we shared common beliefs with. We laid those down and spoke about them in every manner possible:
- Supporting the Indian crafts and artisans community
- Putting sustainability and quality first
- Saying no to gender norms
- Creating one-of-a-kind designs
- Handpicking our craft with care
We've learned a lot from our customers and have made significant improvements along the way. And hey, we're having a blast doing it!
What makes people come to Masaya?
I feel what attracts our customers most is the experience we offer. We make their ideas come to life through art using our expertise.
Our Name Pillows are our most unique product I would say, the story behind it is one I don’t remember. I believe it was a request from a customer that led to an idea and now it has many iterations. It has now gone on to become one of the most sought-after products. Had we not given it a try we probably would not have introduced this category
Art of Masaya
At Masaya, each of our pieces is meticulously researched on and designed to ensure that we build upon yours and your little one’s sense of wonder. The design process itself takes different forms before its final conceptualization, where we see if our designs have the following principle elements: gender neutrality, an educational property, and a story for the little ones to dream about. Our motifs are hand drawn and curated into patterns for each of our furnishing pieces, this ensures that each product we produce has its own charm however they also come together and become a complete experience. We then work with artisans who bring our characters to life by hand block printing each piece and embodying it with generations of culture and traditions. At last you have your own unique piece in the softest cotton wrapped with motherly warmth ready specially for your little one.
Masaya's goal is to communicate with people through Art alone while sustaining Indian arts and crafts. Hence, most of our products are handmade, as we increase the awareness amongst people about local handcrafts and sustainability. At Masaya we grow with the community around us, and believe in building a family.