India

A trade event that witnessed a happy industry was the 38th edition of the India International Leather Fair (IILF) at Chennai from 1–3 February which was marked by trends that promise to propel the leather and footwear sector onto a sharper anvil. A report.

The allocation to the textile sector has increased significantly by 57.7% in this year’s India Budget and although Union Finance Minister Nirmal Sitharaman made some game-changing announcements that would benefit the industry in the long run, there were some missed opportunities as well.

With India poised to become a USD 1.3 trillion retail market by 2025, the opportunities for growth are boundless. Although challenges like rising inflation, supply chain disruptions, and fierce competition could pose hurdles, retailers who remain agile, consumer-centric, and forward-thinking will not only thrive but also shape the future of retail in the country. An insider’s analysis.

Observers are agog over how the launch of a pilot qcom programme by leading e-commerce player, Myntra, will play out. Speculation is rife about what this will mean for fashion markets in India. The talk is mostly about brands and big players. What do these mean for small manufacturers? Do they get new platforms to sell? Or, does this mean they will get financially squeezed as they are often on e-comm marketplaces? An analysis.

The launch of M-Now from Myntra, India’s biggest online fashion player, has caused a stir in the fashion e-tail space in India. This move comes in the backdrop of grocery delivery apps adding apparel to their carts in the last few months. But then, can fashion deliveries work the same way as food and grocery deliveries do? Is Myntra’s a defensive act, or is it a desperate one? An analysis.

Nonprofit Global Alliance for Textile Sustainability Council (GATS) is a collaborative platform for recyclers, manufacturers, brands, policymakers, academic institutions and industry experts to address challenges related to circular economy practices. Founder-Director Parvinder Singh talks about the GATS mission to make the Indian textile and fashion industry more sustainable, competitive, and future-ready.

A UNEP-led integrated programme (IP) has been launched to promote sustainable supply chains in the fashion industry in a bid to address the impact of the sector on biodiversity loss, chemicals and waste, climate change, international waters, and land degradation.

A just-published Apparel Impact Institute (AII) report named India as a crucial region for impactful decarbonisation interventions and outlined solutions for mobilising sustainable financing, stating that with the right monies, manufacturing can play a key role in meeting the country’s climate targets, especially the emissions-intensity target of 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. texfash talks to AII President Lewis Perkins to learn how India’s apparel manufacturers are pursuing decarbonisation and how it can be financed at scale.

The Apparel Impact Institute (AII) has published a report on the Indian textiles and apparel industry, contending that the country is succeeding in sourcing green finance with over $2.5 billion already available to decarbonise the industry in India, but a big financial gap still exists.

The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) has banned five Indian companies into the business of cotton for using fake documents to defraud the GOTS system.