The home textiles market in India is growing with leaps and bounds and in the process has attracted the attention of foreign brands that have entered the Indian markets on their own or through joint ventures. This has happened due to the growing affluence levels of the Indian consumers who are becoming more and more demanding by asking for exquisite home textile fabrics.

To know more about the current trends in this high profile textile sub-sector, Fibre2fashion exclusively spoke to a few leaders from the home textiles industry. We spoke to Mr Arun Garg, Managing Director of Maishaa and an official spokesperson of Maspar. Maishaa has an advanced integrated production line spread over an area of 640,000 sq. m., the production facilities includes in-house designers, yarn processing, weaving, bleaching, dyeing, finishing and sewing units along with confirming to European quality standards and environmental protection norms.

Maspar was set up in the year 2002 to showcase the best in home fashion. Excellence has always been the buzzword here. Each product goes through controlled dyeing for colour fastness and is processed for quality. Manufacturing of chenille yarn, dyeing of yarn, fabric and made-ups, printing, quilting, cording, special sewing machines-the latest technology that exists today, has been brought under one roof allowing Maspar to offer a guarantee on its products that encompasses almost everything related to home fashion.

We began by asking both about the actual market size for home textiles in India and how is it divided between the organised and unorganized sector and the rate at which the market is growing, to which Mr Garg said, "The domestic home textile market size, which is estimated at Rs. 600 billion in 2007-08, is expected to touch Rs. 775 billion in 2010-11. Exports are expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.3 per cent from Rs. 120 billion in 2007-08 to Rs. 170 billion in 2010-11. Home textile companies are also foraying into domestic retail to reach the customers directly".

He added by saying, "Domestic companies are also buying similar companies abroad, in order to tap the overseas market. The manufacturing base is gradually shifting from the western hemisphere to the low-cost countries in the East. AT Kearney, a well-known international management consultancy, recently identified India as the the most attractive retail destination globally. In India the unorganized sector is about 70% and organized is approx 30%. According to a Knight Frank survey, India ranks fifth amongst the 30 emerging retail markets in the developing countries now".

Commenting on the question, the official spokesperson of Maspar said, "There are not much studies available to judge the actual market size of home textiles in India, still the size could be approx Rs. 2,000 crores including branded and non-brand turnover. The turnover of branded home textiles in India would be around Rs. 1000 crores and the rest will be the non-branded. The growth percentage of the organized sector is approximately 15-20 percent and most of the share it gets is from unorganized home textile sector. So the growth of the organized sector is indirectly proportional to the growth of unorganized share as the growth in organized sector will come at the cost of decline in unorganized sector".

Next we asked them to comment on how the market for home textiles has evolved in the last few years, to which Mr Garg explained by saying, "Home textile continues its strong growth in the country, with a number of new projects and the growing domestic market is attracting international companies too and there is competition in both the domestic and export markets".

"China is not a threat for us, as China is unable to manufacture the qualities that we produce, because they use old technology. India supplies over US$13 billion worth of textiles and apparel to the world's markets and exports are growing rapidly as more and more buyers around the world turn to India as an alternative to China. In 2005, spurred by the global elimination of quotas, shipments to the EU soared by 30 percent and those to the USA shot up by 34 percent and these increases are remarkable, given that EU imports from all sources rose by only 8 percent while US import growth was just 6 percent", he concluded by saying.

Spokesperson of Maspar said, "If we see the growth of brand in this sector, earlier all the companies used to export from foreign market but as the market in India grew, branding in home textiles also started taking shape here also. If we go back by ten years, Bombay Dyeing was the major player in the market and no other brand tried to be a part of growing aspiration".