A growth story from colours & yarn

As the son of textile mill worker-parents born and raised in Tirupur, N Chandran was always fascinated by colours. As an athlete, he loved wearing multi-colour vests at sports events, turning out for his university.

Chandran found his fate was knit closely with garments and colours; a nearly five-decade journey that started soon after his graduation in history, economics and political science.

“I started my business in 1975-76 with a home lab – using household utensils and then hand-operated machines for dyeing clothes with focus on quality. My two brothers being in the textile sector helped. Also, I was one of the earliest to get into this trade from Tirupur. After trial and error for a couple of months, I started getting orders from foreign buyers for colour processing and dyeing as they liked the quality,” recalls Chandran, CMD, Eastman Exports Global Clothing (P) Ltd, a garment exporter with an annual turnover of around `2,000 crore.

“From fabrics and colour processing, we added forward and backward integration in operations and even established factories in and around Chennai for woven garments. But constraints of getting labour in Chennai from the early 2000s forced us to focus on operations in Tirupur and on knitted garments,” he says. The company only supplies to the domestic market through overseas players who have a retail presence in India.

Today, Eastman is not only a vertically integrated, end-to-end garment manufacturer and exporter, but also one of the largest knitwear producers in India. It can quickly create a wide variety of samples and products from basic inner garments to high-street t-shirts, coats and tops. It also produces environmental-friendly products from recycled polyester, cotton and organic cotton. It has a little over 50,000 spindle capacity to produce 11,700 tonnes of finest quality multi-count cotton grey yarn annually.

Until 2005, according to Chandran, Indian garment exports were determined by the quota system. Now business is driven by products, quality and compliances – law of the land of both the buyer and seller as well as ethical processes and practices.

“Fortunately, India is blessed with good engineers and technicians. Hence, the transparency level of what we claim is well authenticated. We ensure 100% transparency and traceability. Anyone can track and this has been a key differentiator for the global buyers and brands,” says Chandran.

Having seen the ups and downs of the industry for close to five decades, Chandran is keen to talk about larger issues that define the Tirupur knitted garments industry and emerging opportunities, rather than the nitty gritty of his own business and company. “Tirupur is slowly graduating to a different level – having moved from traditional inner wear to fashion wear for the domestic market as well. There is no dearth of opportunities and Tirupur will keep growing in the years to come,” says Chandran.

Tirupur’s garment industry doesn’t believe in comparing the ability of the locals or migrants, he says. The industry is engaging everyone, irrespective of where they are from. “At Eastman, we do not want to compromise on corporate governance, women empowerment and sustainability and the focus will be firmly on fashion and product development,” says Chandran, whose company rolls out 100 million garments per annum through a network of 30 factories.

“Of the 15,000-18,000 workers that are part of Eastman, 70% are women. Hence, women empowerment is a key focus area. We have a separate division headed by a woman in the rank of senior vice-president and directly reporting to the board to take care of the well-being of workers, their grievances and personal issues,” says Chandran.


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