Once known as the “Manchester of the East” for being the hub of textile companies, modern-day Ahmedabad continues to spawn more of such firms that have made it to the global league. Bloomberg TV India caught up with Deepak Chiripal, CEO of Nandan Denim, to get a glimpse of the India growth story in textiles.

How has the textile industry really evolved?

Through the decades, cotton has been a stronghold of Ahmedabad. So if you go back 20 years, the government has been proactive in promoting exports and making India a global player for cotton textiles. They also introduced the TUF (Textiles Upgradation Fund) scheme. It has been encouraging and a lot of developments have happened. One, I would say that we are very fortunate to be the largest producer of cotton in the world. So raw material availability is the key (factor). Today, we either need to have raw materials or we need to have a market. We are fortunate to have both. That is one strong point of India. Now, India’s middle class is improving, and so is the GDP growth. And the government is also promoting industry and since they want us to become global players, they are giving us all kinds of incentives.

How are Nandan’s operations looking now? Where are you currently present?

Nandan started in 2004. We started with a 10 million-metre capacity in denims, and in the last decade we have been constantly expanding. By next year, we would be one of the – if not the largest in the country. Globally we would be among the top five players of textiles, particularly denim.

What kind of capacity are we probably talking about in a year’s time?

We have been expanding all through these 10 years. In the last phase, we implemented a ₹612-crore expansion plan which would take our capacity from 70 million to 110 million-metre per annum capacity. We are going to add an additional 10 million metres of a cotton shirting product, which is also expected to be the next growth engine for us. We are also doing backward, vertical as well as lateral integration. We are trying to make a world-class company which is geared to meet the demands of the next decade too. As this is a fashion product we are talking about, we are investing a lot, not only on hardware but also on software, for market research, understanding and delivering the fashion aspect. So a lot of effort is being put into those areas and we will continually strive to do that. The next couple of years are planned to be in this direction.

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