Updeep Singh Chatrath has been appointed as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Sutlej Textiles effective April 1, 2021. He will be succeeding S. K. Khandelia, who had been President and CEO since 2009. A veteran of the textile industry, Updeep Singh has over 34 years of experience across various roles and leading companies. He started his career in 1987 with Vardhaman Textiles as a management trainee and went on to become Vice President (Projects). He later worked with the Welspun Group as President (Projects and Commercial) and handled various business roles across the group. Prior to joining Sutlej Textiles, he briefly served as the Chief Operating Officer at NSL and in his previous role he was the Managing Director of global textile machine manufacturer ITEMA.
Singh has been an integral part of the management team at Sutlej Textiles as the Deputy CEO since his joining on January 24, 2018. During this time, apart from managing the day to day operations of the group along with Khandelia, he was instrumental in launching bold new strategic initiatives at the company. Sutlej Textiles has been a leader in the melange and dyed spun yarns. In his new role, Singh will take on the challenge to take it to newer heights. Sutlej Textiles has been an important player in the B2B textiles business and under Singh’s leadership the company has forayed into the B2C market.
The company recently launched a new home furnishing brand – Nesterra. This marks a major milestone in the company’s history and opens up its path to be a vertically integrated home textile major. Singh played a major role in integrating the business with its US subsidiary, American Silk Mills, a company acquired by the group in 2017. The company commissioned the Green Fibre Project which manufactures polyester staple fibres (PSF) by recycling plastic PET bottles. The plant has a capacity to manufacture 120 MT of PSF and is in line with Singh’s vision of taking Sutlej Textiles on the path of sustainability. Sutlej Textiles has been aggressively focusing on digitization with multiple initiatives across its business units.
The company is also investing in new-age technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to provide the necessary boost needed for the fourth industrial revolution. Moving forward, Singh’s vision is to help Sutlej Textiles become a dominant textile player in India. “There is enormous opportunity for textile businesses in both domestic and exports market for India with its cost efficiency and innovation while major importers across the globe are diversifying their outsourcing to countries other than China. With sustainability becoming increasingly vital, a vertically integrated textile player like Sutlej Textiles is perfectly poised to cater to these newer business opportunities in both yarn and fabric.