By the time most shops along Bandra’s busy SV Road begin pulling their shutters down, one lane along Jama Masjid, near Quresh Nagar, only starts getting brighter.
Rows of woven cane pendant lamps hang above the pavement like floating lanterns, throwing warm amber light onto passing buses, parked scooters, and pedestrians. Inside narrow roadside shops packed floor-to-ceiling with bamboo lamp frames, curved rattan shades, and unfinished lamps, workers crouch barefoot on the ground, weaving imported cane strips by hand while others heat thick rattan over open gas flames to bend them into circular frames. The smell of burnt cane and varnish drifts through the lane as work continues well past midnight.
The five adjoining shops in the lane are run by brothers Zayed Khan and Tiger Khan through different brand names, the oldest among them being BEST INDIA CANE HANDICRAFTS, which they say transformed the stretch into Mumbai’s biggest informal cane lighting market over the last 12 years.
Today, the handicraft shop is fast emerging as a favourite amongst celebrities, with actor Shilpa Shetty and actor Sai Pallavi visiting the lane with designers to scout for interiors and décor pieces. One of the recent projects executed by the team was Bastian Riviera in Morjim, Goa, co-owned by Shilpa Shetty.
But when Zayed Khan first came to Mumbai from Delhi over a decade ago, he had no plans of entering the cane décor business.
“I came to Mumbai to become a rapper,” he said, laughing. “I used to write songs. I wanted to become an artist through music.”
Even as Zayed Khan’s family had worked for generations in furniture-making, when he entered Mumbai’s furniture market at the age of 16, he realised he was competing against established businesses that had already spent decades building clients. “The people here were second and third-generation furniture workers. I thought if I ran in the same race, I would never move forward,” he said.
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It is during his quest for an alternate means of business that he noted that architects designing hotels, cafés, and restaurants across Mumbai were importing decorative cane lighting from Indonesia, China, and Japan. The imported pieces were expensive, difficult to repair if damaged, and often delayed during transportation.
Zayed Khan said, “At that time, Pinterest was newly launched. We started seeing designs there, sourced the material, and made the products ourselves. When we brought them to the market, it was like magic.”
Zayed Khan said one of their biggest innovations was removing the heavy metal framework traditionally used inside furniture lamps.
The shops now function simultaneously as workshops, showrooms, and design studios. Workers weave products directly on the roadside while customers walk through hanging lamps overhead, discussing custom orders with the owners themselves.
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Spurred by that direct relationship, the business has expanded with its reach spanning restaurants, cafés, bars, malls and luxury homes in Mumbai, Goa, Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi, Assam and Bengaluru.
In 2018, Zayed Khan said, the family exhibited their work in Delhi, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited their stall and interacted with them.
The market’s success also reshaped the neighbourhood itself. According to Zayed Khan, there were barely any specialised cane lamp businesses in Mumbai when they started. Since then, he estimates that at least 30 to 40 shops have opened after being inspired by their business.
Yet despite the popularity of the glowing lane on social media and among designers, the business remains almost entirely informal. Production happens openly on the pavement. Orders arrive through Instagram and WhatsApp rather than websites or catalogues. Smaller lamps begin at around Rs 300-350, while larger customised installations can cost anywhere from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, depending on the scale.
Global disruptions
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The business has also become increasingly vulnerable to global disruptions. Cane prices surged dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, with imported material rates doubling and tripling. More recently, the ongoing conflict in West Asia has begun affecting production indirectly through fuel and gas shortages used to bend larger cane structures.
What has further fuelled their growth is an outlook to experiment with new ideas. While older artisans often resist experimenting with new designs and younger generations move away from the trade altogether, Zayed Khan said the shop makes an effort to try new ideas every week.
He believes the decline of government-supported handicraft exhibitions has further weakened the industry. Earlier, he said, artisans could display work at state-supported exhibitions free of cost. Now, most exhibitions have become private events charging lakhs of rupees for participation.
Today, most of their recognition comes not from institutions but from customers stopping by the glowing lane outside Bandra Masjid. Around him, workers continued weaving fresh cane strips under hanging lamps as another late-night shift began. “If a client brings a design and everyone else says no,” Zayed Khan said, “we say it can be done.”
