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‘Government needs to do something about hold-ups at airports, ports’

Export units will have to improve infrastructure to survive in the post-quota regime. A lady with an iron will and interminable energy, Ms Mina Chawla, director, Ravissant and Indian Handicrafts, is the driving force behind the two companies. What began as a humble venture has today grown into one of the biggest export houses in the country. She spoke with Sapna Dogra about the journey so far while sharing her vision.

When did you start Indian Handicrafts?

We established our business about 30 years back with retail shops selling garments and exclusive handicrafts. I remember those were the times when hippie culture was at its zenith and chikan kurtas were quite a craze, so we started as traders by buying and selling the kurtas. However, just after a few years we linked with fabric manufacturers, embroidery people and printers and started making our own fabric. Since our stuff was of superior quality (quality used to be the last priority with garment manufacturers that time), it became an instant hit. And we expanded our business by going into exports of garments for men, women, children and a complete range of home textiles. Ravissant came into existence in 1981. While Indian handicrafts caters to the middle class street fashion, Ravissant is for the high end markets.

What do you export and to which countries?

We specialise in womenswear, childrenswear and home textiles. There’s a very large collection of garments in prints, cotton voile, with hand and machine embroidery. In the US we are exporting to high end fashion houses like Anthropology and in Europe our products are bought by major departmental stores, fashion houses in UK, France, Spain, Italy, etc.

What preparations have you made for the post-quota period?

We are in the process of upgrading our infrastructure by setting up more units besides modernising the existing ones. The idea is to create a composite unit having facilities for embroidery, processing, etc at one place. We have to do this to shed the cottage industry tag and to don a more professional look, which meets all international standards. We have already taken up places for this and have started training people also. Basically we are doing value addition to make ourselves more competitive. I feel that the quota free time will give us better opportunity to serve our customers because there will be no restrictions on buying. We have to strengthen the present base by better volumes and for this infrastructure has to be further improved. In 2005 prices will play a major role and the beneficiaries will be the buyers.

What about your present infrastructure?

At present we have two factories; one at greater NOIDA and the other at Okhla. Both of them are internationally compliant. We use international technology with machines by Juki, etc. The fabrics are mostly sourced from within India but we also import fabrics, trims, etc from China. We have looms specialising in making different qualities of woven fabrics. Our dyeing and printing mill have most modern equipment and technology to dye and screen print all types of fabrics.

How do you keep pace with technology?

Every year we invite an expert technician from overseas who inspects our machines and gives inputs about adopting new techniques and methods to match the outputs. The technical department at Indian Handicrafts implements these inputs by getting new technology/machinery etc.