After 30 years and thousands of dhotis, regional traditional wear maker Ramraj Cotton is attempting to get younger.

It has roped in national cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin to popularise its new line of white shirts.

The move, says Founder and Chairman KR Nagarajan, is to give the Ramraj brand a youthful colour, and expand the target group of 30-35 year-olds to include the next-gen.

“This does not mean we are departing from our primary market of dhotis. We hold close to 80 per cent of the dhoti market in the South. There is no scope for a further increase in market share.”

Venturing into North

Priced in the range of ₹600-6,000, the white shirts will also be a point of entry for the Southern brand into North, says Nagarajan.

“For the North, we are looking at a franchising model. But we cannot sell dhotis in the North. So, this new launch is critical to gauge the reception of our brand. We will start marketing our products in Uttar Pradesh by April.” It has invested ₹50 crore to scale up production from 10,000 shirts a day to 30,000 at its factories in Madurai, Erode and Tirupur in Tamil Nadu.

The company’s annual revenues are at ₹600 crore.

Learning experience

For brand ambassador Ashwin, the association with Ramraj is bound to be a learning experience about doing business.

“I am sure working for Ramraj will sharpen my learning curve.”

The company has prepared a commercial with the help of scriptwriting team JD Jerry.

Advertising expenditure has been nearly constant at 2-3 per cent of revenues for years, says Nagarajan.

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