India textile industry facts of the day

The importance of textile industry,

The Reliance Industries (RIL) reports $110 billion in assets and 250,000 employees across its various ventures. Therefore, it employs five workers for each $2.2 million in assets. Shahi Exports, which is India’s largest apparel exporter, has assets worth $185 million and employs 106,000 workers in its apparel factories. Therefore, it employs 1,260 workers for every $2.2 million in assets. For the same investment, Shahi Exports creates 252 times the jobs that RIL does. Jobs that Shahi Exports creates are what India needs most today. Its factories can take someone with fifth-grade education and impart necessary training in just six weeks. On average, these workers earn Rs 15,000 a month. About 60% of Shahi Exports employees are women. If we could rapidly multiply what Shahi Exports does, we could begin expanding formal-sector jobs rapidly — especially for women.

On the competition with Bangaldesh, this is a stunning statistic,

Not only are Bangladesh’s garments export at $ 37 billion more than twice that of India, but that West Bengal’s share is just 1 per cent of Bangladesh’s, which was considered a failed state a few decades ago.

This about the average size of Indian and Bangladeshi textile factories,

an average textile firm in India has about 240 employees, while in Bangladesh, garment factories boast an average of 797 employees per enterprise. 

The challenge even for a company as big as Shahi Exports is immense,

... a private equity investor recently remarked at how slim the margin of error is for Shahi because of the disproportionate challenges of operating in India.

The profile of Harish Ahuja of Faridabad-based Shahi Exports by Rahul Jacob is very illuminating. Why doesn't India have more such first generation entrepreneurs in any manufacturing who have scaled into the big league? Given the size of the economy, it surely has to do with more than the likes of restrictive labour laws.

Update 1 (17.05.2020)

From the FT, nice graphic of the global apparel and clothing trade,

And cotton trade