As we are passing through the centenary decade of Arvind, the new mantra for our growth is to charter a transformational journey through continuous innovation.
Our evolution over the decades places us in the unique position of being among a handful of companies globally to have the distinction of a strong century old heritage, which provides a strong foundation to take new strides into an uncertain and ever so unpredictable future.
In line with its continued innovation thrust, Arvind Limited stands at the cusp of an innovation-led transformational journey into the future. Having successfully emerged from one of the worst crises faced by mankind back in 2022, we forged a solid recovery during FY23. In FY24, we embarked on a new path of enhanced growth and value creation, moving forward on a clearly formulated roadmap for the next five years. What I see ahead is an era of limitless possibilities that awaits Arvind as a business, and as a Group.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES, NEW AMBITIONS, NEW PARTNERSHIPS
As part of India’s economy, which is currently the fastest-growing in the world, Arvind is in the midst of a massive opportunity matrix, promising exceptional growth for the future. The Indian government’s efforts towards making the country a manufacturing hub in key sectors, as an imperative to boost its growth engines, has further opened new vistas of expansion and progress for the Company. The strategic impetus given by the government to the manufacturing industry, through schemes such as ‘Make in India’ and ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, will give us the lever needed to power ahead on the path to long-term growth.
Indigenisation of critical sectors, along with various incentive schemes like PLI and others, will further catalyse exceptional opportunity to keep our order book ringing for a long time.
We believe that sunrise opportunities in sectors like Defence, Aerospace, Nuclear, Semiconductor, Green Energy and particularly Green Hydrogen, in which precision manufacturing and application of specialty composite material are a key component, will lead the way for our brighter future. Opportunities in these sectors will play to our core strengths, including our robust business model, unique product profile and selling propositions, covering both the upstream and downstream of our key customer segments.
These strengths, coupled with our strong partnerships, will continue to steer our progression through the years, inspiring and empowering us to scale new milestones of success. I believe this will require an integrated alignment with India’s aspiration to become a USD 5 Tn economy. Such alignment will, in turn, necessitate decisive choices to steer our organic and inorganic growth, and will be propelled by the key components of our partnership model, namely Tenacity, Transparency and Trust, along with a collaborative approach to growth. It will also compel the nurturance of a future-ready workforce, equipped to surge ahead on an ambitious journey into future.
RISE OF A NEW BEACON [AMD]
In the backdrop of the various new-age opportunities, our ambitious transformative strategy has emerged as a key pivot of Arvind’s sustained growth and performance excellence. FY24 witnessed a major amplification of our transformational efforts. The Advanced Materials division bore testimony to our focus on driving innovation and scale in virgin horizons to push the Company’s growth. The division has shown tremendous progress both in terms of operational and financial performance in the past decade, when it forged an independent path within Arvind Limited. This is no mean achievement.
However, as an organisation that believes in not just delivering to stakeholder expectations but in actually exceeding them, we have now set a higher benchmark of performance for ourselves in this division. The internal restructuring we undertook during FY24 to consolidate all business units reported under the Advanced Materials segment to one umbrella structure, was aligned to this focus. The move is aimed at helping us address growth imperatives in the segment, and take advantage of new opportunities, which will not only be capital-efficient but will ensure transparent reporting of progress.
This ability to seize emerging opportunities has yielded us great benefits in the past too. Our foray into the Human Protection garments business as an extension of the Fabrics division in 2008 stands out as a key example. Human Protection has now grown into a Rs.800 crores business for us, competing with the top five players in this segment in the world. We believe that the consolidation of Advanced Materials will lead to synergistic benefits to our Human Protection business, which will benefit from the former’s large and diverse fibre to fabric base with deep processing abilities.
ADOPTING A PARTNERSHIP APPROACH
Arvind’s partnership philosophy is a key enabler steering our ability to maximise the growth opportunities and enhance stakeholder value. Our partnership approach is driven by the key tenets of Tenacity, Transparency and Trust. The last couple of years have witnessed a strengthening of our collaborative strength, which is manifest in the various partnerships we have forged to drive sustainable, long-term growth. We have entered a Joint Venture with PurFi Global LLC, a textile circularity technology company specializing in rejuvenating textile waste into virgin quality products, to reduce the amount of textile waste going to landfills, thus promoting textile circularity.
Our ground-breaking partnership with Gap Inc. is aimed at transforming water management practices within the apparel manufacturing sector, with the new Global Water Innovation Centre for Action (GWICA) a cornerstone of our efforts. GWICA will help confront the pressing water challenges faced by the global textile and apparel industry, opening new vistas for sustainable development.
More recently, in February 2024, the H&M Group decided to test Deven Supercriticals’ new technology SUPRAUNO® at Arvind Ltd., one of their long-standing partner’s factories. This disruptive technology uses Supercritical CO2 instead of water and reduces chemicals needed to dye fabrics, and the prototype has shown promising results in energy, water and chemical use reduction. We are proud to partner with the H&M group on this vital innovation, aimed at enabling significant sustainability benefits for the industry.
An important outcome of the above said partnerships in areas of mutual interest and commitments is that it transforms our partners into ‘close partners’ in the areas of commercial interest. This enables stickier counterparties for long-term growth of both the partners.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE FUTURE
As we move towards the next phase of our growth trajectory, we do so with the confidence that our strategies will unleash new opportunities for Arvind. Our plans for the future include diversification of our product portfolio, addition of new capacities, exploring new geographies, and seeking out new customer segments for organic growth. At the same time, we are also looking forward to grow inorganically, which will add new dimensions to our business and accelerate our growth journey, while being prudent on capital allocation.
While we have our growth mantra carved out for us, what we have to be careful about is remaining vigilant on our key success factors, like quality of our products, on-time delivery, meeting commercial commitments with our customers and vendor partners, and above all, taking care of our employees, while remaining profitable and creating value for all our stakeholders.
Let me share with you my understanding of what our value creating journey should entail in the coming days. One, our focus should always be on a customercentric and innovation-driven model. Two, we should stringently maintain our cost leadership and quality proposition while we march towards higher targets.
Three, we should ensure that we operate a mean and lean structure, which allows us to reform, perform and transform to adapt to a dynamic world. Four, we should invest in the future twin engine of capacity and capability building.
Finally, at Arvind, we are fully cognisant of the potential impact of our operations on ecosystems and environment. Our commitment to environmental stewardship is guided by a proactive approach to not only minimise these impacts but also to achieve a balance through targeted interventions to leave a better planet for future generations.
SHARPENING OUR SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS
Environmental responsibility is, in fact, embedded in every sphere of our endeavours and actions. FY24 witnessed a significant scale-up in our sustainability credentials. We commissioned our first biomassbased boiler at the denim plant at Naroda to enable fossil fuel-free operations at the facility and increased decarbonisation for the Company.
The establishment of a Global Water Innovation Centre for Action (GWICA) in partnership with Gap Inc., one of our main customers, marked another landmark moment in our sustainable growth journey. We have also initiated measures to enhance our renewable energy usage from the current 43% to around 90% in the near future, and given the high levels of profitability of renewables, this will yield higher return on capital employed for the Company while eliminating the carbon footprint and strengthening our sustainability credentials.
TRANSFORMING FOR TOMORROW
While there are several companies in the same and similar domain, it gives me immense pleasure to state that Arvind has been able to carve a niche out for itself, based on a rich legacy of a century and the promise of a bright future for next one. The key, therefore, is to maintain our unique position and proposition with an ambitious goal of growth, with focus on value creation for key stakeholders.
I am very happy to inform you that the Arvind Group, of which you all are an integral part, has recently become a USD 3 billion Group. At the heart of this portfolio of progress is a journey of evolution over the years, and I am sure this is just the beginning of an even more successful odyssey. Moving forward, despite our limitations, let us all be guided by the prospect of enhanced growth, which we shall steer through our collective efforts and mutual trust. To quote Henry Ford, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself”. Let us be guided by this mantra as we embrace new opportunities in our quest to create a better tomorrow.
