The Indian textile industry is as old as the world textile industry. In fact the first known cotton cultivation seems to be from India followed by UK. Bombay or Mumbai as its know today is synonymous with the textile industry in India and also has the soubriquet “Manchester of the East”. However more and more textile industry has been push to other states of India particularly Gujarat and Madras which are increasingly gaining the attention of the world textile buyers. Mumbai due to its high urbanization is becoming more of realty market. However I want to add a fact to the above statements is that Mumbai is the commercial capital of India.
Lot of niche markets is opening up in India. One place I recall was quite interesting was the Tirupur Textile Industry based in Madras. The place has become synonymous with the exports of India Knit wear. The industry based here is truly thriving with all the modern equipments and technologies. It is estimated that around 35 countries of the world visit Tirupur every month. Now look at this they deliver samples of custom-made knit wear in about 12 hours and up to half a million pieces within a few days. All for the dedication and hard work of workers as well as exporters whose ultimate goal is to meet the international buyer’s requirement sometimes quite unreasonable. Today Tirupur can boast itself being in the elite list of towns with the largest foreign exchanges in India. Super quality brads like Wal-Mart’s, JC Penney, Marks and Spencers have shown a keen interest in the Tirupur textile industry consisting of around 7,000 garment units providing employment to more than a billion people.
The world is looking up to the Indian textile industry to deliver its goods using technologies used and developed elsewhere be it the USA or Japan or Hong Kong.
India has an untapped potential to become in the top three list of producers as well as exporters.