Knitting a New Beginning

Local entrepreneurs in Tiruppur are exploring new markets, diversifying product offerings, and increasing focus on sustainability to counter headwinds. Will the bets pay off for the southern town of Tamil Nadu, which accounts for 55% of India's knitwear exports?

- P.B. JAYAKUMAR

WHEN INDIA liberalised its economy in the 1990s, Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu had already made the shift from agriculture to industry, with scores of small cotton knitwear units, moving up the value chain from just cotton ginning units. Tiruppur was like any other small town industrialising the licence-raj way. Educated youths from cotton and paddy farming families in the Noyyal River basin, a tributary of the Cauvery, set up small knitwear units producing male in-nerwear and T-shirts.

Brands such as Tantex and Ramraj soon began to sell across India. Committed young entrepreneurs transported bundles of fabric and finished products on their TVS 50s, India's first moped, from unit to unit on the maze of dirt roads that turned into sludge-filled ponds in the monsoons (Tiruppur did not have a drainage or sewerage system). Traders from all over India came to the railheads at Podanur and Tiruppur to buy hosiery in bulk, staying overnight in dodgy hotels.

Things improved when Tiruppur began receiving export orders. Exporters had to go to Coimbatore, which had become an industrial hub in the 19th century, to send a telex to the buyer. Soon, Tiruppur began receiving large export orders. Aspiring exporters bargained with buyers from the U.S. and Europe in pidgin English.

Liberalisation also sparked a boom in 24x7 STD telephone booths, from where people could call any number in the world directly. Then, in the 2000s, Tiruppur was one of the first Indian towns to tap into the Internet, mobile phones, and then smart-phones. The dollars brought prosperity—big mansions, top-end cars and even Tiruppur's first civic body and drainage system. In 2008, Tiruppur became the headquarters of a new district named after itself.