Welspun eyes 150% jump in textiles sales to 2.5 bn by 2020

Welspun, India's largest and the world's third-largest home textiles manufacturer, has set an ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to USD 2.5 billion by the turn of the decade. The Mumbai-headquartered Welspun Group, which is also the single largest player in the USD 17-billion American home textiles space with a 5 percent market share, nets one-third or USD 1 billion of its group revenue of USD 3 billion from the textiles business now. The company expects the higher growth will again be driven by the US market as it plans to increase its focus in the world's largest textiles market further.

The US contributes around 65 percent of the total sales now. "Over the years, we've been successful in changing the contours of the US home textiles market with our innovative products and added customer focus. When we entered the US, the Indian companies were fringe players as Chinese marketers dominated the market.

But no longer so. "Today, Indian companies together dominate the US market with 11 percent of the total USD 17 billion home textiles market," Dipali Goenka, Welspun Global Brands managing director told PTI in an interaction at the company's US headquarters in downtown Manhattan here, during a recent visit during the MarketWeek, wherein the suppliers engage with the buyers. "As we increase our focus in the US market, with a direct online presence with an e-commerce portal, we have set a revenue target of USD 2.5 billion by the turn of the decade.

We also expect 25 percent of sales to comes from branded products, which is only around 11 percent now. "Though we see a major growth in Indian sales, bulk of sales will still come from the US," the 46-year-old Harvard-educated Goenka said. Welspun India is the holding company of the group's textiles business, which is the largest in Asia and the third-largest globally in the home textiles space.