texfash

The single largest cotton trading company and a public sector undertaking under the Union Ministry of Textiles, the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI), established in 1970, undertakes price support and commercial purchase operations to safeguard the economic interest of farmers in the cotton growing regions and to ensure its smooth supply to the textile industry. A Q&A with its Chairman-Cum-Managing Director, Lalit Kumar Gupta.

His is a classic case of how an artisan from the grassroot level can rise to reach some of the most famed museums in the world. Not many know but he has, stitch by stitch, needle by needle, threaded his way into the cultural mosaic that this country is. His thread is his voice, his loom a battleground for respect. In conversation with Asif Shaikh.

Surat is built by people who arrived with little but resolve, turning hardship into high-growth enterprises. Their stories reveal a city that rewards speed, grit and practical intelligence—a place where partnerships form easily, risks are absorbed quickly and learning never stops. Here, ambition meets an ecosystem that converts effort into scale, making enterprise almost instinctive.

It’s a paradox wrapped in polyester. Surat—the city that spins out 60 million metres of manmade fabric every single day—stands on the verge of an industrial chokehold. With 700,000 looms running and ₹200 billion in turnover, India’s synthetic hub is built on imported muscle: machines, yarn, and know-how. Now, a compliance rule threatens to pull the plug on that ecosystem—testing whether the synthetic capital can truly stitch together scale, self-reliance, and sustainability before the loom slows down.

In Surat’s textile maze, there’s a fast fashion player going sustainable with almost zero minimums, made-to-order fabrics, and size-inclusive garments shipped across India and beyond. Flipping the bulk-first playbook, from one metre to a multi-crore business, Fabcurate’s small-batch smarts with print, cut, stitch, ship is scaling big as it rewrites the e-commerce rulebook.

India’s cotton story is fraying. Once the world’s largest producer, it now harvests less from more. Fields are shrinking, farmers are quitting, and seeds have stood still. The crop that once wove India’s textile strength now risks unravelling under policy paralysis, poor yields, and disjointed priorities from farm to factory.

From a 90-day credit norm to 250 and counting, India’s textile market has turned into a waiting game. One jolt followed another — demonetisation, GST, lockdowns, wild cotton swings. Through it all, Gujarat’s textile heartland endures, with traders and manufacturers like Gaurang Bhagat and his LB Tex battling to keep India’s fabric trade from tearing apart.

A riven industry, dumping from China, GST mismatch, need for a uniform countrywide textile policy, the scourge that is fake billing — in spite of it all and more, the enormous potential that this ancient warpwork holds is shackled by systemic inefficiencies, implores Gaurang Bhagat, Treasurer at the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and Founder of the ₹1000-crore LB Tex.

Surat-based Man Made Textiles Research Association or MANTRA is one of the eight national level Textiles Research Associations (TRAs) and one among the leading in man-made fibres. While the key focus is the textile industry in the synthetic capital of the country, it works on the overall textile development and on technical textiles in general. In conversation with Director Dr Arup Rakshit.

From bootstrapped beginnings to a ₹230 crore powerhouse, the True Colors story is far from over. Having mastered the art of resilience, the company is now writing its next chapter — one defined by expansion, innovation, and self-reliance. This is the second and concluding part of the story.