The new Indian Tech-xtile industry

The sector is highly branched out, catering to various divisions ranging from conventional handloom products to cotton, wool, silk products, natural and man-made fibre, yarn, and apparel. Usage of textiles is widespread across key end-use industries like healthcare, defence, automobile, and construction. Its massive potential for employment generation opportunities in the industrial and organised sectors in rural and urban areas has transformed the industry into a significant contributor to accelerating the economy.

Sector’s upward growth trajectory

The country’s textile domain has been experiencing a colossal growth potential, and with a more technologically innovative supply chain being put into place, the sector’s advancement could be further propelled. Between 2000 and last year, the industry has received FDI inflows in surplus of $3 billion, considerably driving up the sector’s growth.

The Indian textile industry is majorly reliant on cotton as its prime constituent. The production of raw cotton in the country plays an essential role in enabling the textile industry to flourish.

The sector that was impacted by the pandemic has managed to turn the crisis into an opportunity. The post-COVID-19 era has offered a growth prospect for the digital textile industry owing to its virtual operations. By acting as a game-changer, the role of technology in strengthening the industry’s potential has resulted in increased sales that will continue to persist even in the forthcoming years.

India is home to some of the leading textile companies such as SVP Global Ventures, Welspun India, Grasim Industries, Vardhman Textiles, to name a few. Considering the industry’s growth potential and employment generation, the government introduced the Integrated Skill Development (ISDS) Scheme to address the skilled labour required to run the diverse textiles sector and its segments.

As per a recent study, the textiles sector accounts for about 7% of the overall industrial output, thus lending momentum to exports simultaneously. It further estimates that textiles will account for $82 billion in exports by as early as 2021. The growing industry figures indicate that our country is set to touch the USD 185 billion figure by 2024-2025. One of the significant contributors to the textile industry’s growth is SVP Global Ventures. The company has observed sustained growth in last two quarters, bouncing back from the lockdown impact. Their product mix of high margin compact cotton yarn, rise in yarn prices, infusion of AI-based technology in manufacturing, and strategic location of Sohar plant at Oman and Jhalawar plant at Rajasthan has provided tremendous operational efficiencies. The company worked efficiently during the pandemic. SVP plans to expand the Oman plant further by doubling the spindle capacity to three lakh and adding another 3,500 rotors. The company has the vision to be a fully integrated textile company. Towards this end it has set up a plant in Sohar, Oman to manufacture garments to cater to Middle East market.

The National Textile Policy (NTP) 2000 targets to generate occupation by way of increased global investments. This policy’s key focus areas comprise technical upgrades, productivity enhancement, diversification of products and financing arrangements.

Technological advancement

Further to the sector’s potential growth, the technology element plays a crucial role in reviving the Indian textile industry. Technology has reshaped the textiles industry to meet the rising demands and trends by providing data-driven customer operations. The sector is amidst a wave of innovation with automation and artificial intelligence in textile machinery. These developments have allowed organisations to work remotely and control their machinery and data collection and analytics to march towards further improvement.

SVP Global Ventures has installed state-of-the-art manufacturing technology to expand business operations and production capacity as one of the industry leaders. The company has installed 150,000 spindles and 2,400 rotors cotton yarn automated manufacturing facility in Jhalawar, Rajasthan. The company’s relentless drive to adopt new technology has given it competitive advantage globally. Furthermore, digitally-backed transformation in manufacturing technologies will further boost existing capacities with a labour-intensive to capital-intensive production approach.

The modern machinery with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology enables the company to manufacture yarn of the highest quality in higher operating margins with traditional spinning mills. These tech-infused efforts, upskilling labour, logistics efficiency will further result in higher productivity.

Overall, with the remarkable advances and backed by solid domestic consumption and healthy export demand, the future for the Indian textiles industry seems to be bright. Also, the gradual economic growth/new normal amid the pandemic has given rise to higher disposable incomes, further leading to the surge in demand for products, thereby creating a bigger domestic market.