Interview with Mr. Manoj Kumar Tibrewal

"Experience & knowledge gained in trading waste cotton in 80s made us to venture into manufacturing of yarn. Our huge success in every venture thereafter only brought in laurels to us and paved the way to establish Gangotri Textiles in 1989 as a corporate entity to manufacture coarse count yarn using Open-End technology. The first Unit became operational in 1993 at Coimbatore with a capacity of 768 rotors spread across a vast area. Our company’s first & second yarn manufacturing units were set up at Coimbatore in the year 1993 & 1995 respectively. Third unit was established at Kolhapur in 1997 & all these units used open-end technology of producing yarn. As we realized there was wide scope for organized players to exploit the growing domestic garment industry, we gangotri-textiles-ltded our brand “Tibre” in October 1999 at Bangalore. From then there was no looking back for the brand & last financial year we clocked selling 2 lakh pieces of garments. One should note that we sold 2 lakh pieces in a single product category of semi formal trousers. With the core strength of strong and committed workforce of 1500 backed by a 300 strong administration wholly dedicated and devoted to the task of “Serving society through industry”, the journey began nearly 2 decades back for Gangotri Textiles to reach present niche in the industry. This journey routed: 1989 – Gangotri Textiles was born 1993 – First Unit with 768 rotors established 1994 – Expansion of Unit I with 384 rotors 1995 – Establishment of Unit II with 1344 rotors 1997 – Expansion of Unit I by adding 1344 more rotors 1997 – Acquisition of Unit III with 384 rotors at Kolhapur 1998 – Expansion of Unit III by adding 576 rotors and a large recycling plant 1999 – Expansion of Unit III by adding 384 rotors 2000 – Acquisition of Ring spinning unit with 17136 spindles at Palani 2000 - Grand entrance into the garment industry with the gangotri-textiles-ltd of “Tibre” brand of trousers from its apparel division at Coimbatore, and also setup its own Garment Stitching unit in Coimbatore 2001- Establishment of a state-of-the-art washing and processing unit at Perundurai 2001 – Expansion of Unit II with 720 rotors 2002 - Modernisation of unit IV with state of art machineries 2003 – Obtained ISO 9001:2000 Certification 2004 - Establishment of Wind Mills 2006 - Commencement of World class integrated Cotton to Garment Unit"

We started to produce Tibre trousers in the year 1999 with 5 machines & now our factory has grown to have close to 100 machines. During the first phase of our gangotri-textiles-ltd we marketed our product in the 4 southern states & now Tibre is available in 13 states. We have been adding new states month after month. We positioned our brand as a premium brand & marketed through leading multi brand outlets. Our success could be attributed that we struck to the single product category of semi formal trousers. As anyone would appreciate it is very difficult to gain market share in the trouser segment than the shirt segment and we have done it!

Last financial year we did realize that the demand for our brand is much more than the supplies and this prompted us to expand our manufacturing capacities.

"The unique qualities of Tibre are as follows: High quality fabrics made of superior two-ply & three-ply yarn World-class accessories Pattern created by master tailors to fit the Indian male torso comfortably In-house manufacturing facility completely using European machines from cutting to finishing More stitches per inch with core spun thread for additional strength & elegant seam appearance Special treatment to give luster & soft feel retaining durability More pocketing material that is expensive, skin friendly, better absorbent & durable Bio friendly fabric suitable for the discerning male Stringent quality norms In house washing facility for the ultimate feel Tibre moves with the fashion from the traditional twills to the structural fabrics in cotton blends"

I would not accept that there is a delay in gangotri-textiles-ltding women trousers except that we have been communicating that we have plans of entering the women’s category as well. We have planned to enter in to this segment only by next financial year.

I would like to emphasis that currently we are only in to domestic market but as we expand our garment capacity, we will be venturing in to export markets, esp. European & US markets, as we feel very confident in meeting their stringent quality standards.

The new products from GTL will be men’s semi formal shirts, men’s formal trousers, men’s shorts, women’s formal trousers, denim wear, men’s accessories etc.

Future plans for Tibre is concerned, we will be opening EBOs (Exclusive Brand Outlets) across the country. We have plans to expand our ring-spinning unit by another 50400 spindles and will commission a weaving planed with a capacity to produce 50000 meters every day. And we will be expanding our garment capacity to produce 4000 garments a day. For all our new manufacturing facilities, we are increasing our captive generation power plant by another 9.9 MW.