'Create something that outlives you' – Yogesh, Umaid Mills

06 Jan '12

11 min read

Also on the agenda is a foray in to home textiles and apparels. Yarn exports are one more area from which Yogesh looks forward to increasing revenues. Currently yarn exports make up for just 10 percent of overall sales, of which third party exports account for more than 80 percent. He wants to increase multi-fold the quantum of direct export sales so as to strike a balance between domestic and export sales and create a new market.

Yogesh joined the organisation in 2007 and spent around three months on the shop-floor learning about the working of each and every kind of machine installed in the plant. He gives credit to mainly two persons for his mentoring. Mr GR Agarwal, an ex-senior official of MSUM and now a director, taught him the finer nuances of the textile business.

The second is Mr JK Jhanwar, a life-timer with the L.N. Bangur Group and in-charge of the raw materials division, mainly cotton at MSUM. Under Mr Jhanwar, he really understood the importance of raw materials in a textile mill, mainly cotton, which makes up for almost 60-70% of the production cost in yarn production. As part of his mentoring process, he has visited cotton fields and ginneries in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab.

Yogesh is more involved in strategizing new plans for the company. He does not believe in involving himself in the day-to day affairs of the company and leaves those to the professionals who have joined in the last few years. He however prefers to treat everyone in the company as a colleague.

In November 2011, under the stewardship of Yogesh, MSUM won the “Forbes Asia 2011” award for the 'Best Under a Billion Dollar Company' out of around 15,000 companies from the Asia-Pacific region. The main criteria's were an increase in turnover, profitability, debt to equity ratio and increasing value for shareholders in the last three years and is also the only textile company from India, to have won the award in 2011.

Interestingly, MSUM has one of the lowest debt-to-equity ratios in the Indian textile industry and is a cash positive company, sitting on cash reserves of around Rs seven billion and debts of less than Rs two billion.

MSUM clocked a turnover of Rs 4.3 billion in fiscal 2010-11, against revenues of Rs 2.5 billion in 2007, the year when Yogesh joined MSUM, posting a CAGR of a healthy 25 percent in the last four years. The hike in revenues has been achieved on a capital investment of less than Rs. 250 million in the period.

Giving reasons for the jump in turnover at a low capital investment, Yogesh explains, "At a nominal capital outlay, we decided to introduce value-added yarn varieties such as compact and eli-twist. In case of the fabrics division, we outsourced production and processing of new variety of fabrics - shirting and bottom weights and utilized the excess in-house processing capacities for value addition thereby directly creating a positive impact both on total turnover and profitability.

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