“It’s a matter of great pride to see your child grow up, embrace a good value system, seek high aspirations, and achieve more than what you ever thought was possible,” this is a tiny part of speech made by Narayana Murthy, Founder, Infosys at the 25th anniversary celebrations of the company almost 10 years ago. Indian home furnishing export industry too has many companies that have completed 25 or even more years with the same sense of wonder. Apparel Online talked to some of them to trace their journey and take their views on the changes that shaped this industry in those years. Flooded with mix memories, these veterans, some of them now senior citizens, are retaining the same strong spirit that helped them grow the business despite increased challenges, new ways of working, greater technology interventions and evolved buyers’ strategies…
Former President of Delhi Exporters Association (DEA) and oldest pillar of Tilak Raj & Sons, Delhi (Cosmique Global), Tilak Raj Manaktala (82), is still active in his office and it can be felt in his voice, even over the phone. He stepped into imports first in 1956 and started home furnishing exports later in 1976. “Now business is more organized as well as contemporary, and pressure is to always offer something new within the cost bracket acceptable, which is incidentally the biggest change in business. Every stakeholder of the business is now under pressure on price and the only principle is to ‘buy cheap-sell higher’ to whatever extent possible,” says Manaktala. He believes that now production is easy, mainly because of better technology, but the challenge is about further growth. According to him, Indian home furnishing industry can have only natural growth; no extra growth seems possible, because of fast changing fashion trends, real estate boom and other related and unrelated matters. The industry has also shifted more towards buyer-driven markets, especially in regard to India.
Whereas changes on the buyer’s front is concerned, these companies are of the opinion that while earlier they lost business as buyers shifted to China for bulk as well as reduced price, but now these very same buyers are coming back to India as China is no more cheap. Azhar Ansari, Director, NS Industries, who initiated his business from Farrukhabad (UP), and now has a factory in Noida says, “As day-by-day the market for value-added products has increased, buyers too have come back to India. And though the recession of 2008 or even the recent slow order flow from Europe has impacted business, but now India is better positioned and is moving towards being a preferred destination for buyers.” Azhar struggled a lot as he started business at the young age of 17-18 years without any big support and is proud to be completing 25 years of his business with still many more years of hard work in him.
Despite plenty of challenges, most of these companies feel that nowadays conducting business is easier as today there is better infrastructure, IT interventions, advanced machines, better quality control systems, transparency, training, professionalism and many more such things that support operations and also provide opportunities for continuously updating and improving themselves. “As we were manufacturing less quality products, using fewer quality control techniques and without the support of buying houses, most of the buyers used to take maximum one or two shipments. So it was difficult to get regular orders from the same buyers and we were always searching for more buyers. But thanks to technology and systems which everyone is using now, it has helped in developing consistency in orders. Also, as we can’t see the machine lying idle, we are more motivated to work for more and more orders,” shares Sudhir Bhatia, Founder/Partner, Universal Knitwears, Delhi who has a factory in Sonepat. Bhatia claims to be among the frontrunners to start work with C&A in India.
Triage Overseas, Delhi founded by Atul Anand in 1979 has reasonable number of staff members working there for more than 18-20 years and Francis Joseph, Manager (Operations) is also one of them. “We are proud that with all round support my organization has completed such a long period. It definitely helps having such buyers who are working with us from initial days and understand us better,” says Francis.
A trend which has picked up over the years is of apparel manufacturers (especially in Jaipur) entering into home textile. These relatively fresh entrants are not considered significant competitors to the old and well-established home segment players. “One of the biggest Gurgaon-based apparel exporter, who is doing reasonably good home products, tried to fetch a trained team from a home furnishing company, but could not succeed easily. An apparel company may get some hold in the home segment, but since we are exclusively in this segment and have already reached a certain level, it is now not easy for us to cross. So all-in-all, companies doing both product categories have little impact on our business. This little impact is also mainly because of buyers that are sourcing both apparel as well as home products, ” informed an old timer who is running his home furnishing factory from the last 30 years, on promise of anonymity.
Most of these companies have achieved high growth in their business and to maintain the same growth rate now is very difficult. In Bhatia’s words, “In initial years my annual shipments was worth Rs. 20 to 30 lakh and as of today we are doing annual business of US $ 5 million (Rs. 30 crore). Further we are expecting 33 per cent growth.” Azhar too says, “We started with business of Rs. 1 crore annually and now it is almost US $ 5 million (Rs. 30 crore) per year.” Support from Government has continuously reduced with time, be it in the form of incentives or policy matters. Bhatia recalls that in his first shipment in 1973, he got 30 per cent cash incentives; can anyone imagine such thing nowadays…” Manaktala bemoans that in India the cost of credit is still higher compared to many other countries.
To survive and record continuous growth for such a long time is not only a matter of pride for the owners and founders of the companies, but also for the staff, especially those who have worked for long time with such companies.
