Nandan Terry Pvt. Ltd incorporated in 2015, started operation from 2016. It is a vertically integrated unit right from cotton to towel. Have spinning, weaving, dyeing and stitching process, itManufactures towels, selling in export markets as well as domestic brands and markets. Nandan Terry deals with international names like Walmart, Kohls, Biglots, TJX, Ross Stores to United Colors of Benetton, and Trent, Westside, Walmart India, Reliance Retail in domestic markets. It is exporting to countries like US, UK, European countries, South America, Australia, Middle East, and also selling to domestic customers like V Décor, D-mart, Bombay Dyeing. Besides, It is also selling to unorganised retail sectors in India. The entire business has been going on well from the last 5 years, and it Nandan Terry plans to continue growing with backward and forward integration plan in the next couple of years.
Apart from manufacturing terry towels and toweling products, the company also sells the cotton yarn manufactured at its units to achieve better sales realisations.The company has five manufacturing units and facilities are situated in the state of Gujarat, India and cater to manufacturing of terry towels & toweling products in business – to – business (B2B) segment.
Nandan Terry’s revenues from operations for fiscal 2021 stood at Rs 538.52 crore, a 25.42% year-on-year increase compared to Rs 429.39 crore in fiscal 2020, primarily due to increase in sale of towel and toweling products and sale of cotton yarn. Its annual profit for fiscal 2021 stood at Rs 23.38 crore, which increased from Rs 1.22 crore. For the six months ended September, its revenue was Rs 501.81 crore and profit was Rs 30.62 crore. As of October 31, 2021, it had 2037 full-time employees.
Ronak Brijmohan Chiripal, CEO, Nandan Terry Limited replied to the Textile Value Chain’s queries about the company and the plans for the future.
Excerpts:
- How was your last two years of pandemic? How the company has sustained?
Seeing from the business prospects the company has actually grown recently because when the lockdown struck the country our factory was running and the demand was there from the US as well as other countries. Because the retailers probably were selling more, as soon as you know that was not much of a problem in the US.So only for one and a half months, there was a big problem. But then I think most of the retailers, most of the e-commerce people were selling a lot of towels plus covers being an essential product. You know, rather people probably started focusing on more hygiene and, changing their towel more often. And ceaning and washing the towels more often, so that’s why the demand actually grows if you see the entire home textile industry the industry grew basically in the last 2 years. And as our figures show that we grew since the pandemic, and we continue to grow, so we had a decent demand, and the capacity utilisation increased. We had some problem of labour for probably a couple of months when the government opened up everything, you know when they went back home. So that was the only time when we faced certain issues, but other than that, fromthe market perspective, we always had a lot of demand for our products, since last two years. So that is why, you can see the top line has grown and also the capacity.
- How do you see the next five years?
I honestly think the next five years should be good. If you see, as I said last couple of years is kind of a reflection to what is going to happen in the next five years, the world is actually adopting a China plus policy, and actually trying to do their business in another countries, and India I think as the most advantageous position here because India was always kind of second or third biggest exporter in this industry. So as a China plus customer strategy in India gets a very good advantage. You can see other countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh where problem is there of raw material like good quality cotton. India has a good quality of cotton so the entire value chain and if we talk about the country the value chain is really well supported for such a business, and when I talk to customerspeople want to go out of China or the stores of China. They prefer working in India, so I see a lot of growth coming from 2 to 5 businesses. Most of the retailers do not have a home segment like H&M has a home segment; Zara has a home segment so a lot of fashion brands getting to the home textile. So, clearly the business is moving from China to India and this will bring also a lot of growth.
- What is your product innovation and R and D strategy for your company?
We have come up with a lot of products like an antiviral towel, which is doing good due to the current pandemic situation, and so we called it Viroshield. We work with designers in UK as well as in Portugal, and then we have a designer in USA. So these designers basically are freelancers. We work with them on a project-to-project basis, so wherever we have this presentation. It will be taken ahead to build a design based on the trends, the current trends and everything. This is one creative side of our R and D. On the other side, we are using our own spinning, we kind of make different types of yarn. We made a yarn calledOsmose, which basically is oxygenated, and a special technique makes this unique yarn. This was launched probably three years ago, but we keep doing a lot of R and D and so we have a knowledge sharing platform where everyone comes up with their developments. We have created a model where we kind of grow our top line and bottom line without including a lot of fixed cost. We are kind of doing contract manufacturing.
- What is the branding strategy for the Indian and international marketers?
So we are basically making towels for different retailers, at the same time, we have already registered three brands. The names are Casalino , Humahome, Swadeshi. So we registered this three Brands and we already started manufacturing of Casalino towels. Probably in the next two months’ time, they should be in the market, and probably by next year we will realise the results of branding exercises. And at least 5 percent of our manufacturers will be our own brands, so that is what the target is. We also have registered this brand in US So right now we are focusing on Indian market in all the channels, so basically there are four channels. We are focusing on –one is for protecting, then is retailer, another is the e-commerce, the fourth is hospitality, so these four segments we want to focus in India and in the US.Probably we start with e-commerce, and then gradually you know we might get into other three segments. But as of now in the US only the e commerce and in India probably all the four segments.
- Now people are using more sustainable products. So what is your take on this, and what is the future of the sustainable fibre & sustainable products?
The World is focusing a lot on sustainability. And that is a good thing. We have also, kind of taken initiative, made the cotton-hemp towel, we have also made towels using a recycled yarn, which is basically recycled plastic bottles. A lot of cotton post-consumer waste are being recycled, and we use this recycled yarn. I can tell you definitely, I feel that sustainability is going to be the next big thing. The quality or strength of that end might not be as good as probably fresh cotton, which is the best cotton. and I think with advancement of the technology it is possible to make good products because you know a lot of new technologies being launched for making good quality recycled yarn and recycling products. We have already started focusing a lot on sustainable measures and I keep traveling and I see that the world is actually moving towards that. They have a section for sustainable products. And that is why we also taken an initiative and tried launching a few products on sustainable blends of hemps, a lot of recycled cotton and so on. Of course, the demand is not as much as it could be, but still seeing from the retailer’s perspective it will probably be a reasonable amount.
6.Government has the launched PLI scheme of the benefit of the textile industry and recycling industry, so what is your take on this?
The government focus is to promote synthetic textile industry as well as technical textile industry. The focus on the PLI scheme is probably mostly industries like technical textiles, defence manufacturing, diaper, sanitary napkins and all those productions. Towels do not qualify for any of these industries which qualify for PLI scheme, so we don’t have any benefit from the PLI scheme, but this is a very good initiative and I think that will definitely help the industry.But for towels, I don’t really see any advantage.
- As the industry leader what advice & message will you give to new entrepreneursentering this textile field?
I think message would be that you know, stick to the basics, sticking to the basics helps us a lot, and personally, such focus has helped me a lot. And secondly, keep innovating and keep up with the new trends, because I have seen in the last five years, like earlier days when things used to stay for 3 to 4 years. Now trends probably stays only for a few months, so I think it’s very important for everyone to keep up with the trend and keep up with the demands of the customer, Be as flexible as possible for the customer. We have always given customers flexibility because they are the ultimate choosers.
