A round table discussion was organized by Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) on taking ‘KHADI: local to global’ with support from KVIC and UDAANSKILL. The event happened on 30th Jan 2018. Contribution of the Textiles and Apparel Sector in providing employment opportunity both direct and indirectly to almost 35 and 50 million people in India, making Khadi an important segment for concentrating towards export promotion.
It focused on connecting the global demand and supply of Khadi, identifying newer markets and product diversification; developing promotional strategies to enter newer markets, inputs on trade policy, market access at WTO front, compliances, design interventions and possibilities of CSR interventions from corporate and PSUs.
“The export prospect of Khadi is rest assured as greater demand is being generated for bio-degradable and Eco-friendly products. It is for this reason the new MEIS 2015-20 policy also emphasizes on export incentives on eco-friendly textiles giving it a 34 per cent growth last years from 52,000 crore to 70,000 crore turn over,” Suresh Prabhu, minister for commerce and industry said at the event.
Owing to very low (less than 0.22 per cent) share of Khadi sector in total textiles sector, there is a need to focus on exports of this sector and end to end marketing strategy with support from trading houses and academic institutes like IIFT is the need of the hour, he added.
The Guest of honour V.K.Saxena, Chairman, Khadi and Village Industries Commission explained about the diversity of efforts made by KVIC towards promotion of Khadi. He also said, “Its export worthiness also comes from the fact that Indian Khadi earns a lot of water and carbon foot print since it requires only 3 litres of water as compared to 56 liters in other fabrics.”
The round-table discussion was attended by Foreign Embassies; corporates including Raymonds, Future group, Aditya Birla, Hero, Maruti Suzuki India Limited; PSUS including LIC, NHPC, HPCL etc, EXIM bank, Amazon India, FICCIrepresentatives of ICHR etc.
Apart from the supply side constraints for raw material procurement and production, there is also a strong need for establishing a strong demand in global markets. This will require the innovation in terms of diversification in product and market. Lack of product diversification is quite visible through limited export basket of Khadi which currently includes silk and muslin, readymade garments, textile-based Khadi and charkha. IIFT with a strong research capability can contribute towards establishing market intelligence and give inputs on appropriate policy instruments and contribute towards cluster development Prof. Manoj Pant, Director, IIFT said.
“Giving boost to export startups, KITTES, IIFT incubation cell would aim at developing new startups working towards Khadi exports” Dr. TamannaChaturvedi, Co-ordinator, KITTES said.
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