The 44-year-old Chennai-headquartered Meenakshi India is a manufacturer and exporter of apparel to leading brands in the US and Europe, with a production facility in Salem. The company, with more than 1,200 employees, is recognised as a star export house by GoI. In an interview, CMD Ashutosh Goenka spoke about growth, expansion, and the road ahead. Excerpts:How did you evolve from a textile trading company into an apparel exporter?The business was started by my father, Shyam Sunder Goenka, in 1982 as a textile trading company. We distributed Aditya Birla products across South India for nearly a decade. In 1991, around the time I graduated, we had a property in Ambattur that housed a steel forging unit. There was substantial unused space, and Ambattur was a thriving garment manufacturing hub. We decided to establish our first garment manufacturing unit there. As the business grew, we expanded by establishing our first facility in Salem in 1996.What prompted the decision to move manufacturing to Salem?At that time, most of our fabrics were sourced from Salem. So, locating manufacturing closer to the textile ecosystem helped reduce lead times, critical in the garment industry. Although Salem lacked an established workforce, training employees from scratch proved advantageous, resulting in better productivity, discipline, and quality than what we experienced in Chennai. We added a second facility in 2006 and closed our Ambattur unit because it had become economically unviable. In 2011, we established our third facility near Rasipuram.How did your product strategy evolve? Why did you specialise in non-denim bottoms?We began as a shirt manufacturer as Chennai was known for shirt exports. During the quota regime, I saw that trousers and bottoms commanded far higher quota premiums, while few Indian companies specialised in non-denim bottoms. We chose to focus on that niche and later expanded into jackets, which share similar manufacturing processes. Today, we are recognised as among the best bottomwear manufacturers.What are your growth ambitions now?We are targeting revenue of around `450-`500 crore by FY30, up from `188 cr in FY25. It’s a realistic and achievable target. We want to remain a premium niche manufacturer. Competing purely on cost against countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia is not our objective. Those are different business models.What are your expansion strategies, investment outlay and overseas manufacturing plans?We aim to increase our annual production capacity from around 18 lakh garments to about 35 lakh pieces by FY30, with an investment of about `40 crore. Whether this capacity is added in India or overseas will depend on evolving market conditions and trade agreements. Trade policies and tariffs will drive overseas plans. We have entered into a contract manufacturing arrangement with a partner in Sri Lanka to provide flexibility if tariff differentials widen again. While there is no need to route orders through Sri Lanka, the arrangement can be activated if required. We are also evaluating Nepal for a wholly owned manufacturing facility because of its operational familiarity and ease of doing business.How is the next-generation leadership evolving at Meenakshi India?My father, who founded the business, is now 85, and retired. My son Shubhang Goenka is the whole-time director, and is involved in the day-to-day management. After completing his PG at Oxford and spending three years with Royal Bank of Scotland (now Natwest Group) in London, he returned to India and joined the business. The transition is gradual, and the next generation is playing a meaningful role in shaping the company’s future.How was the response to your D2C brand Shortstop?It is still a test launch. The early response has been encouraging, but we are taking a measured approach. Retail is different from exports, and we are learning. We are leveraging our manufacturing and product development strengths to build a differentiated offering. The advantage of e-commerce is the relatively low entry barriers. We are refining products and expanding the range based on customer feedback before committing larger investments.How will upcoming FTAs help the industry and your business?The EU FTA could be transformative. Today, countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam enjoy duty-free access to Europe, which places Indian exporters at a disadvantage. An FTA would improve India’s competitiveness. The India-US BTA could be equally important because the US and Europe together account for the bulk of our business. Currently, Indian manufacturers can be at least 10% more expensive than competing suppliers because of tariff structures. A favourable trade agreement would help create a more level playing field.
