Arvind, a diversified conglomerate with interests ranging from textiles to retail and real estate, will invest ₹500 crore every year for the next five years to expand its textile business.

The investments will be made from its internal accruals and will total ₹2,500 crore by 2023.

“We have a clear plan to invest ₹1,500 crore for the next three years. After that we will continue to invest for another two years. We expect our revenues to go up to ₹12,000 crore by the end of five years from the present ₹6,000 crore,” Kulin S Lalbhai, Executive Director, told BusinessLine. “The entire textile trade is moving from China to this part of the world. We feel Arvind is in a unique position to take advantage of this even as the growth in domestic industry for apparel is also strong,” he added.

The investments would be mainly for large-scale garmenting, with the company planning to convert at least 50 per cent of its fabrics into garments.

From fabric to garment

At present, Arvind converts only 10 per cent of its total fabrics produced into garments.

The investments will also be used for the company’s foray into performance and functional clothing (active wear) and synthetics, and for scaling up its branded textiles and technical textiles businesses. The company intends to create five hubs. Of this, four will be in India — Jharkhand, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Bengaluru — and one in Ethiopia.

Each hub will employ 5-10,000 workers. At present, the company has just one hub — in Bengaluru — employing 10,000 workers.

Demerger on track

As part of its demerger plan, the listed entity Arvind will be split into Arvind, Arvind Fashions and Anup Engineering.

These companies will be demerged by the first or the second week of September, and then delisted within 45-60 days.

“In the interim, Arvind would be the only listed company,” Lalbhai said.

A number of other businesses such as Arvind Internet, Advanced Materials, Envisol and Telecom are also now being incubated under Arvind.

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