The Chatterjee Group, the private equity firm with ties to the core manufacturing and services sectors, is now betting big on its consumer business with the textile division as it prepares to refresh and relaunch the ‘Garden Vareli’ brand and expand the offerings under it.
The pivot to B2C (business to consumer) comes four years after TCG firm MCPI Ltd acquired Garden Silk Mills Ltd (GSML) from bankruptcy court and with the takeover the once popular Garden Vareli brand of sarees came under its fold.
GSML is now in the process of spinning off the textile vertical into a separate company, beefing it up with people who have knowledge of the vertical. The ambition, as articulated by Purnendu Chatterjee, chairman of TCG, is to create a global textile business under the Garden Vareli brand.
TCG is aiming at a ₹2,000 crore topline by the end of this decade, a 20 times jump from the present level. “We have been assessing the business of textile and fabrics for quite some time and had appointed Ernst & Young to study it. Apart from expanding the range of sarees, we will venture into dress materials with SKD (salwar, kameez & dupatta) and other associated areas such as accessories (cosmetics, leather),” Debi Prasad Patra, managing director and CEO of MCPI, which completed 25 years in April, said.
With Garden, TCG will be present in the entire value chain, starting from the raw material PTA at MCPI, Haldia, to yarn at GSML, Surat, and fabric and textile in Garden Vareli, also in Surat.
Patra said the group would use the existing ecosystem of Surat, the textile hub (synthetic fibre) of India, to scale up the business. “What sets us apart is the knowledge of the manufacturing,” he said.
The company plans to set up exclusive Garden Vareli outlets at strategic locations apart from retailing via multi brand outlets. “We will equally focus on digital marketing to reach our target consumers,” Mahendra Singh Bhadoria, the newly appointed CEO of Garden Vareli, said, adding that Garden’s offerings would not be limited to synthetic fibre but will also expand to cotton, silk and blends.
For the international foray, Garden may start with contract manufacturing for other brands to understand the market dynamics before reaching there with its own brand.