Texvalley, an integrated wholesale textile trading centre designed to support the wholesale business activities in Western Tamil Nadu, is set to don a new avatar with three new subsets including both B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to customer) segments.  

The largest textile market, sprawling over 20-lakh sq ft on the Salem-Coimbatore highway at Erode, seeks to transform into what it calls “India’s first destination mall” of its kind to expand the audience base from B2B to B2C as also to attract a diverse customer base.  

Texvalley was launched as a public-private partnership project in 2009 under a special purpose vehicle - Erode Textile Mall Pvt Ltd, promoted by Lotus Group and the URC Group.  

“The fragmented mindset of the textile industry can be addressed with a platform or an institution like Texvalley where we can discuss every aspect of the value chain. We would like to keep growing and evolving with the changing customer needs. We have appointed consulting firm Beyond Squarefeet for our transformational journey,” said Devarajan C, Vice Chairman, Erode Textile Mall Pvt Ltd (Texvalley).  

In the new avatar, Texvalley will be earmarking more than 4-lakh sq ft for B2C business and lifestyle outlets. It will house a hypermarket, a five-screen multiplex, a 500-seater food court, 100+ ‘outlet’ vanilla shops, five fine-dining options, a 25-room hotel, and a family entertainment centre. The formats of these facilities would be completely new to the region.  

Drawing footfalls

“There is a big scope for this B2C business and lifestyle outlets in this region, which is a significant contributor to the State’s GDP. We have already spent about ₹450 crore on this project and for the transformation, we may spend up to ₹100 crore. The B2B and B2C segments will help footfalls grow multifold – from about 60,000 a month (pre-Covid) to about 5 lakh a month in the next two years,” said P Raajashekar, Managing Director, Texvalley.  

Three subsets

Susil S Dungarwal, Chief Mall Mechanic, Beyond Squarefeet, which specialises in providing end-to-end solutions in mall space, explained that Texvalley’s new avatar will sport three subsets -- the existing global market (a B2B marketplace that offers an outright lease model); the Tex Value Mall, which will be the largest outlet mall sporting retail shops of big brands based on a 100 per cent lease model. These shops will offer a discount in the range of 40-70 per cent every day throughout the year; and the Big Box Bazaar which will sport “category killers” that will include large furniture, electronics, toys and other outlets for both B2B and B2C segments.

“We are converting Texvalley into a place, not for Erode, but entire India. We hope it will become a most sought-after destination in 6-8 months,” said Dungarwal.  

(This correspondent was at Erode at the invitation of Texvalley)  

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