Grasim Industries has ventured into retailing women garments made of viscose staple fibre. The company’s subsidiary, Birla Cellulose, on Friday, launched the garment brand Liva, which will be available at 1,000 outlets across 50 cities.

The launch comes as the company completed the last phase of its greenfield VSF plant of 1.20 lakh tonnes a year at Vilayat (Gujarat) earlier this month.

It has an overall VSF capacity of 4.98 lakh tonnes a year across three plants at Nagda in Madhya Pradesh, Kharach in Gujarat and Harihar in Karnataka. Grasim commands 20 per cent of the world’s VSF market with an investment of over ₹4,300 crore in its pulp and fibre business.

In order to complete the value chain process from VSF to garment, the company has tied up with 250 partners including processors, spinners, weavers and garment-makers under Liva Accredited Partner Forum.

The Liva garments, targeting high-end young consumers, will be available at retail outlets of Van Heusen women, Allen Solly women, Global Desi, Chemistry, F-109, Pantaloons and Lifestyle.

Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Birla Group, in a statement, said that the Group believes in a customer-centric approach for all its brands and these brands contribute a turnover of over ₹60,000 crore, larger than that of many leading consumer brands put together.

“In the viscose fibre business, customers were several steps away from our operations. With brand Liva, our endeavour is to establish the same connect with the end-consumer and while doing that take the entire value chain along with us,” he added.

KK Maheshwari, Managing Director, Grasim Industries, said the company intends to invest ₹150 crore next fiscal and incurred expenses of ₹150-170 crore in the last two years in R&D and establishing the value chain.

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