KVIC promoting khadi use among brands to boost sales

With strong government support and value addition to their products, the khadi industry is currently redesigning its marketing strategy and revamping itself. The state-run Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) is now aggressively tying up with large apparel chains and offering more value-added products . It is expects sales to reach Rs 1,500 crores in 2015 as compared with Rs 844 crores last year. Until last year as much as 70 percent khadi sales were in the form of fabric but the company has now turnaround in a way that so far this year almost 50-60 percent of sales has come came from readymade garments sold at KVIC's 7,057 khadi outlets nationwide.

With encouragement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's growth and development model for the textile industry, KVIC is also preparing a vision document to boost sales. The commission has also tied up up with local brands to market its hand-made products. Raymond Fabric and Fabindia have already agreed to devote a section to khadi outfits in about 600 of their outlets in the next two months. These designs would have a khadi mark on them and sold under a new label name, like for example,abindia will be selling these products as Khadi marketed by Fabindia.

KVIC chief executive Arun Kumar Jha points out that the company is promoting khadi as a zerocarbon footprint fabric that is perfectly suitable for Indian climate. It is experimenting with different colours and designing and promoting it through trade fairs where they are showing it as a fabric for the youth.

At the recent India International Trade Fair in New Delhi, KVIC’s stall recorded sales of Rs 8 crore and trade enquiry worth Rs 30 crores. Alongs with adding value to the products, more khadi stores are opening across India. Some 200 new stores in places like Coimbatore, Lucknow and Murshidabad etc have undergone renovation with KVIC spending close to Rs 10 crores in a bid to jazz up the industry.