Indore-based Pratibha Syntex is banking on short-term-quick result strategies to take its capacity utilisation from the current 60 per cent to full capacity by January 2021.
Pratibha Syntex enjoys the distinction of being one of India’s most sustainable apparel export houses and is known for its up-front approach to business and challenges.
Shreyaskar Chaudhary, MD of the company said, “Uncertainty still prevails and concerns over health are still as valid as they were 6 to 7 months before. Yet, business is moving toward normalcy. As of now, long-term strategy is very futile so we are working on very short-term planning like what we can do in the next 1 or 2 months. And we do a frequent review of the same.”
Shreyaskar added “This is like we are working on micro-projects. Various tasks forces have been created with 5 to 7 members each to work on the broad areas of governance, cost, quality, delivery and growth. Within each area, there were multiple projects to work on. Something that we may not have implemented effectively and needed more attention or some that just needed to be done now. Good deliverables are coming out of all this. We are much more agile now.”
He further added that decision taken today may need to be revisited tomorrow. Every day there is a new challenge at the various fronts right from workers’ absenteeism or anything; accordingly, we have strategies. The situation today is very fluid on availability of workforce (absenteeism/quarantined due to COVID or other health-related matters) and production planning, cash flow, stock utilisation due to order cancellations, employee motivation, work from home and virtual connectedness and virtual reviews.
He is also of the view that from a long-term perspective, we have to be very competitive and for that, the company will adopt the latest technology, be it 3D, overall digitisation. Speed to market (significantly crashing lead times), Industry 4.0 and sustainable innovations.
Regarding the shifting of orders from China, Shreyaskar feels that India is not ready for this; the level of competitiveness is less especially compared to Vietnam. “Our company also has such enquiries but we are very cautious regarding increasing the workforce, taking care of their wellbeing, etc. So, we have to be very careful. Even though opportunities are there, we can’t take off them immediately due to uncertainty but by January 2021 we will be more prepared for the same.”
Regarding various recent initiatives of Government, he believes that the Government is doing its job and we have to do our job. “Alignment is required in all the initiatives. Positive dialogue is required so it can realise that whatever is required, happens,” he concluded.
This year will be considerably low for the company as its overall business is expected to be 20 to 30 per cent less compared to last year.
