While the pandemic posed several unforeseen challenges, it shifted the industry’s focus towards safety, with the sector focusing on creating operational changes and precautionary measures to get the business running. And with the home taking centre-stage due to the new ‘work from home’ culture, Indo Count Industries shifted its attention to the additional demand created towards home and home textile products
Indo Count Industries Limited (ICIL) is one of India’s largest home textile manufacturers. The company has over the years emerged as a total bedding resource. While the narrative in the textile industry in recent times has been on how to overcome the pandemic-induced challenges, Indo Count Industries has made heads turn by clocking 20 per cent year-on-year growth! Its revenues stood at Rs 2,557 crore in comparison to Rs 2,135 crore in FY 2020-21. What is it that the company has done differently from others? Giving an overview of the strategies adopted, Kailash Lalpuria said that while the year had its fair share of challenges, owing to the sudden lockdown restrictions and logistical impediments of the pandemic, the company forged ahead with an optimistic mindset.
“We meticulously enhanced our plans and catered to high-value demands of home textile products. This led to us having something to deliver even when the situation was hard all around us. We rallied around our highly experienced team and were able to tide over the storm to bridge the gap between the pre and post-pandemic world,” he says. “We looked at the circumstances and ensured that Indo Count Industries had the necessary things to meet the goals and step up to the challenge at every corner. Our experience of over three decades and agile leadership made all the difference in the current circumstances. This organisational set-up helped us find innovative ways to navigate through the challenges,” he adds.
Pandemic Spin-Offs
Kailash Lalpuria puts a positive spin to the impact of the pandemic on the home textile segment, globally and in India. According to him, as the pandemic posed several unforeseen challenges, it shifted the industry’s focus towards safety, with the sector focusing on creating operational changes and precautionary measures to get the business running. He feels that with our homes taking centre-stage due to work from home and social distancing culture, there was an additional demand creation towards home and home textile products. Additionally, the pandemic has also become instrumental in generating awareness amongst buyers, creating an elaborate demand for health, hygiene and wellness products, which has increased significantly.
“Capitalising on these trends, we at Indo Count Industries continued to push ourselves and focused on one of our bigger markets in the US that provides us with 75 per cent of the sales. Identifying significant demand during the pandemic and ensuring that all steps are in place to meet that demand helped us to expand our distribution. Even amidst the pandemic, we believed in our depth of expertise and chose to deliver on our commitments, thereby achieving an increase in our market share,” he informs. “We maximised on the robust demand and are confident that we will be able to keep up with the growth going forward,” he adds.
“The domestic market has displayed promising signs of positive growth with omnichannel services. These comprise both online and offline services that can accommodate the rising domestic demand,” Lalpuria states. Speaking about the key changes and initiatives that the company has taken in the aftermath of the pandemic, he elaborates: “With Indo Count Industries we continually count on our strengths and feel confident about how our plans are being executed even in this second wave of the pandemic. Given how the challenges have only increased in the current wave, we have taken core initiatives that directly answer the needs of meeting the rising demands in local and global markets.”
Experience Counts
“We focused on utilising our valuable experience in the industry and rallied around our organisational structure to hold tough decisions and incorporate changes that benefitted in increasing our operations. We aimed at a positive, growth-centric outlook for the year which reflected in our collective output to ensure we maximised efficiency. With a healthy profile of highly experienced leaders and a great team that brings a positive outlook to meeting the demands, we have ensured that safety is paramount and all pandemic-related protocols are followed,” he adds. “Creating such an environment helped in meeting all our demands and we are now even more certain to exceed our executions in the coming months while inching up from 13-15 million metres per quarter to 20+ million meters in the last three quarters,” he informs.
“In any crisis, a positive outlook is the key to overcoming the hurdles and hindrances of uncertainties. With this belief, we are committed to investing in each member of our skilled and unskilled workforce – the team is ultimately the reason we can enjoy strong Q4FY21 results with a 74 per cent year-on-year rise in income,” reveals Lalpuria. The company has recently increased its manufacturing capacity. According to Lalpuria, increasing the capacity had always been on their agenda to meeting rising demands. “We have witnessed great growth even amidst the pandemic and are ramping up our state-of-the-art facilities to amplify the same. Keeping our rapid growth and future requirements in mind, Indo Count Industries has increased the manufacturing capacity by 20 per cent from 90 million metres to 108 million metres,” he informs.
Changing Market Dynamics
Kailash Lalpuria feels that the pandemic has pushed home textiles companies to further innovate and come up with safe, sustainable products for consumers. He points out that earlier the consumer had the option of purchasing products that highlighted health and hygiene such as antiviral and antimicrobial finished fabrics. However, today this has changed and everyone wants to have these features embedded in their products. This has led to an increase in the basket size and health products have taken priority over other items as essentials. Continuing further, he says: “Three years ago, when we launched our aspirational brand ‘Boutique Living’ followed by ‘Layers’ last year, we learnt that high value and good quality products that meet the growing expectations of the new class of aspirational consumers will always find a place in the purchase basket.”
“Hence, we will continue to create exceptional experiences for our consumers with every product we make. Our constant innovation has led to us to curate various bestselling brands, which include ‘Wholistic’, a health and hygiene brand; ‘Sleep Rx,’, a performance brand; ‘Pure Earth’ with a sustainability focus; ‘Boutique Living’, a mid-market aspirational brand; and ‘Layers’, a value-driven mass brand. According to Lalpuria, a majority of the company’s business comes from exports. He adds that the company is currently the largest exporter of bed linen from India. “We do business with almost all major retailers in the US and have the highest market-share of bed linen in US’ imports. The China Plus One strategy will further help us increase our market-share globally,” he says.
Increasing Export Value
“Exports constitute 93 per cent of our revenues. Our domestic bed linen share is 1 per cent of revenues and the rest is cotton yarn sales. On the domestic front we sell to LFS like Shoppers Stop, Home Centre, and others. We have distributors’ pan-India,” Lalpuria states. Highlighting the core strengths of Indo Count Industries, Lalpuria singles out product development and innovation. He adds that the company continually strives to meet the needs of its customers and that undeterred by the pandemic crisis it is endlessly pioneering to deliver unforgettable customer experiences. He feels that with its state-of-art operations, talented team, capital adequacy, debt-free status, complete product solution, strong customer base and overall global reach, the company will capture the rising demand and reach new heights.
Capacity Expansion
The company has recently invested in capacity expansion. Going into details about the same, Lalpuria says, “We have ramped up our manufacturing capacity from 90 million metres to 108 million metres by investing around Rs 150 crore, keeping in mind our exponential growth in recent times and our performance in FY21. The company has given volume guidance at 85-90 million metres for FY22. We are also modernising our spinning units with compact modern technology. This would entail a capex of Rs 50 crore. This total capex of Rs 200 crore is expected to increase our revenues by about Rs 600 crore over the next two years, post commissioning by H2FY22.”
Product Diversification
Lalpuria answers in the affirmative when asked whether the company is planning any further product diversifications like technical textiles or apparels considering that these are fast-growing segments and there is increased government focus. “The changing nature of the industry has always kept us on the lookout for growth opportunities in the domestic and global markets. We are continuously monitoring the growth trends in allied markets and their growth story. At the same time, we are also ensuring that our current and core business would get even stronger. Allied industries are always a possible segment to enter and we are always open to those opportunities,” he observes.
Lessons from the Pandemic
As a business leader, Lalpuria lists down three key lessons that the company has learnt from the pandemic. The first one is that every organisation has to rally around its team of experienced professionals who are pillars of strength in the time of crisis. Tough situations call for tough measures and the company has held on to its strong team to help turn the tide. “Secondly, the pandemic has invariably caused the home to become the centre-stage of livelihood. The home is now turned into an office space, a school, entertainment and fitness centre. Given these changes, it is only natural to see that home essential products would increase in demand. The time now spent within the comforts of the home is irreplaceable and non-negotiable,” he says.
“This pattern has led to a rise in the consumption of home textiles and we were ready to meet this surge in demand at the right time. Since our focus was on bed linens, we were able to climb to a position of leadership in the market. This is a huge win for us in terms of readiness and an honour that we would like to see manifested into a higher opportunity in the coming years. This structural shift of the rise in demand for home textiles is indeed here to stay and grow,” he opines. Given such guidelines, the top management of Indo Count Industries has lined up ambitious growth plans for the company.
Being a Leader
Elaborating on securing a leadership position in the market, Lalpuria says: “Being in the textile business since the last three decades we are happy to see that we have been able to achieve a leadership position in bed linen exports. This has given our organisation great confidence and has motivated us to further our share in global textile trade. While strengthening our core business we as a company are looking at both organic and inorganic growth. We are also focusing on playing a larger role in the domestic market,” he adds. “We are building a company which can provide omnichannel services to all our customers. We believe we will do good growth on the e-commerce front as well. We have given an indication that as a company we will double our revenues by 2025-26,” Lalpuria states, winding up the interaction on a positive note.
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We meticulously enhanced our plans and catered to high-value demands of home textile products. This led to us having something to deliver even when the situation was hard all around us. We rallied around our highly experienced team and were able to tide over the storm to bridge the gap between the pre and post-pandemic world…
– Kailash Lalpuria, Executive Director & CEO, Indo Count