India Needs to Improve Sampling Capabilities and Availability of Some Specific Raw Materials

Zurich-based Gherzi Organisation, incepted in 1929, is a global textile management consulting and engineering company, that has since emerged as a leader for strategic development and expansion of companies in the textile industry, from production to retail. Its services range from engineering of new factories to strategy consulting as also corporate finance. Leading its global team is Giuseppe Gherzi. Gherzi talks India, what ails its textile sector and what can it do to capture the opportunities that exist.

Richa Bansal

31 March 2025

4 minutes

Long Story, Cut Short

Big brands and retailers are shifting their sourcing offices to India and this will attract a lot of investments in synthetics, in finishing capabilities and therefore, India, will improve its weaknesses which are still there today.
Future growth will come not only from within India but will be driven or pushed by foreign companies coming here for sourcing and thereafter asking for investments down the chain.
The unorganised sector needs to accept the fact that this industry is going to transform within the next 15 years, and therefore it needs to come together to create some larger entities which then can cater to the new customers coming to India.

texfash.com: Gherzi operates globally. Tell us how does Gherzi look at India? How do you see India as a textiles apparel market? And how do you see India as a textiles apparel manufacturer, besides cotton, of course?
Giuseppe Gherzi: We started our operations in 1960 in India and we have seen the transformation of the Indian textile industry. Yes, it did start with cotton and it did start with spinning and still today most of the investments are going in spinning but we are seeing now some fundamental changes because the big brands and retailers are shifting their sourcing offices to India and this will attract a lot of investments in synthetics, in finishing capabilities and I think, therefore, India will improve its weaknesses which are still there today. These weaknesses are mainly based on speed, time to market. We need to improve our sampling capabilities, the speed of sampling. China is much faster than India. And I think we're lagging approximately two weeks behind China. We also need to improve the availability and cost competitiveness of some specific raw materials. And this will then help the transformation of the Indian textile added value chain.

Could you tell us about the projects you are currently involved with in India?
Giuseppe Gherzi: First of all, there are two different types of activities that we are doing. One is management consulting and the other one is engineering. Now in management consulting, we cannot disclose the names of our clients because this is confidential and we are working on M&A, on restructuring, on strategy, on product development or market access. But in engineering, which means planning of factories, planning of new capacities, these are projects which are known. And here we do see first of all the Indian companies investing now into higher added value textiles, meaning technical textiles. We also see Southeast Asian or Asian companies as well as European and American companies coming to India and setting up their sourcing departments but mainly also garmenting, production of technical textiles. And I think this is one of the main drivers of the future growth in India. It will not only come from within India, but will be driven or pushed by foreign companies coming here for sourcing and thereafter asking for investments down the chain.

This is an industry where you have big brands and big retail on one side and countless SMEs globally on the other. The latter cannot afford the services of companies like Gherzi. What can they be expected to do?
Giuseppe Gherzi: I think that they have to accept the fact that this industry is going to transform in India within the next 15 years. Especially also in the South. There are many smaller companies like spinning companies or weaving companies which are sub-critical in terms of size. They need to pool together. When these big garmenters are coming to India they expect a supply, of not cheap product or not expensive product but they expect the supply of a product with consistent quality in order to run their machines on high efficiency. And in order to achieve that consistent quality for a long period, over years, you need to have larger units. And therefore, the unorganised sector should actually pool together, create some entities which are not sub-critical anymore, larger entities which then can cater to these new customers which are coming to India.

How do you see AI shaping up the industry? Where is AI set to have the most influence in Industry 0.4? Is it Industry 0.4, designing, supply chain optimisation, that is PLM, ERP, what is it?
Giuseppe Gherzi: AI is today mainly used at the end of the chain. Brands and retailers are using AI in order to gather the data, the trends in the market and the requests from the customers. And then they are projecting these requests, bundling it and giving it down to production. Now in production, AI is partially used, is starting to penetrate the sector of machinery. So, OEMs are already starting to have machines which are self-adapting. I'm talking about cards, which in the future will automatically adapt the distance of the card wires. And these are self-learning machines. This is happening today. In the future the entire spinning mill will be based on AI tools where the machines in the spinning mill will talk to each other and balance out independency of the raw material which is coming in.

As a leading consultancy, what is Gherzi's understanding about what is wrong with the slow progress of the global textiles apparel fashion industry on the sustainability path? Synthetic fibres are not going down, the intake of new fibres is negligible. What is wrong?
Giuseppe Gherzi: I think nothing is wrong. It is the nature of our industry, which is an extremely old, fragmented and very slow to change industry. We in Europe and in the US, we know that the trend will go towards sustainability towards recyclability, either mechanical or chemical. But we can also not expect that this industry, which is so atomised and fragmented and worldwide, adapts immediately. And also technology-wise, we need to still bring some chemical recycling which is really feasible, which is not on industrial scale as of now. I don't think there is anything wrong. it will only take longer time until it will penetrate the entire textile added value chain.

Richa Bansal

RICHA BANSAL has more than 30 years of media industry experience, of which the last 20 years have been with leading fashion magazines in both B2B and B2C domains. Her areas of interest are traditional textiles and fabrics, retail operations, case studies, branding stories, and interview-driven features.

India Needs to Improve Sampling Capabilities and Availability of Some Specific Raw Materials

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