Ahmedabad textile industry’s fixation with technology at the cost of managerial capabilities has frayed the city’s reputation as the Manchester of the East, suggests the doyen of India’s textile business and IIMA’s governing-council member, Sanjay Lalbhai.
“The industry is talking about modernisation and new technologies, but it actually lacks in managerial capabilities,” said Lalbhai, the chairman and managing director of Arvind.
“Look at Infosys. It has catalysed the Indian IT industry,” Lalbhai said. “And because of that India is known as the world’s IT hub. But despite textiles being a traditional industry, not a single company has become a big world player.” As a textile super power, Ahmedabad had more than 125 cotton mills.
Lalbhai was speaking at a seminar, ‘Steering a mature business: A leadership challenge to the textile industry’, organised by the Ahmedabad Management Association and fiber2fashion.com. In his speech, Lalbhai said that the leaders of the textile industry, the government, and other stakeholders were doing something wrong.
“The size of the textile industry in India is worth $40 billion,” he said. “But not a single company has crossed the $1 billion mark.” Lalbhai said that textile companies must work as a team.
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