Apparel and garments player, Gokaldas Exports’ entry into personal protective equipment (PPE) business came to its rescue during Covid-19 hit FY21.

“We seized the opportunity to design and manufacture PPE and became one of the largest producers of the product during the early pandemic. This brought in revenue to the extent of ₹80 crore during the year and substantial cash flows to tide over the financial deficit during the early part of the year,” Sivaramakrishnan G, MD & CEO of Gokaldas Exports told analysts.

Explaining FY21, he said during the year, the company managed to cut costs, rationalise capacity, streamlined operations.

“When the first Covid-19 wave struck, we had order cancellations and realignments, payment deferral and operations closure, resulting in a stressed H1 of FT21. The third-quarter (Q3) saw a constrained order flow as the customers were holding excess inventory from spring 2020,” explained Sivaramakrishnan.

To tide over the Covid-19 crisis, the company also consciously reduced its exposure to Indian retail customers to minimise credit risk.

“We then returned to business normalcy from Q4 onwards. With all these efforts we could contain an overall export sales drop to just about 9 percent over the previous year,” he said.

He added “We ensured high efficiency in our manufacturing process, controlled our cost well, contained working capital deployed, and improved connection with our customers. Thus, despite a drop in revenue the company delivered a superior EBITDA margin for the year as compared to the previous one.”

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