Apparel Online India Magazine May 2nd Issue 2018 | Page 47

PERSPECTIVE STORY
whenever AEPC participated at BSM’s
overseas. Rahul Mehta, President
CMAI (@RahulMehtaCG) is also
seen on Twitter sometimes and he
shares interesting info about apparel
market, retail segment. Sri Narain
Aggarwal CMD, Prafful Overseas
and Chairman, Synthetic Rayon
Textile Export Promotion Council
is also on Twitter (@narain_sri) and
many more such stalwarts are there
on various social platforms, but they
are hardly active.
Among them Sanjay Jain (@
TTsanjayjain), MD, TT Ltd. and
Chairman of CITI, NITRA and
Textile Skill Council is comparatively
more active. Though none of the above
mentioned stalwarts of textile and
apparel industry have much followers,
Sanjay feels that staying in touch
Very few exporters are active
on Instagram as this is a
platform mainly for pictures
and they don’t want to
make public their designs.
Yogeeta Prabhakar, MD at
Prabhakar Overseas Group
of Companies, Noida and
an active user of Instagram,
does get some business from
these social media platforms.
“Being social media-friendly
(engaged user) I got some
good start-ups/e-commerce
kind of clients from overseas
also, but as we are not very
much familiar with e-Retail, we
have to be very careful about
payment and allied activities.”
is very important. “Representing
prominent textile bodies, I am
trying to create awareness and
educate the industry on various
issues. Majority of our industry
is from MSME sector and most of
them don’t have any clue about
what’s happening. So, for me
these platforms are also a way to
communicate with them. These
are days of collaboration not
competition; you collaborate with
people by networking with them as
an individual, as an independent
company; the more you network, the
more you collaborate. Somewhere
they will help you or vice-versa and
together you will grow,” says Sanjay.
FROM ARMED FORCES TO
APPAREL BUSINESS
ARMED PERSONNEL IN INDUSTRY SERVING BETTER…, AS USUAL
A
ccording to Export Promotion Bureau
(EPB), the Bangladesh apparel
industry – the world’s second biggest after
China – has around 40 ventures/entities
(mostly medium and large) formed over
the years that are led by retired defence
personnel, and their number is on the rise!
On the other hand, India may not have such
large number of armed personnel in garment
manufacturing industry, but there are some
interesting examples of people who started
their journey from army and have proven
themselves in apparel industry also. The
first that comes to mind is Major B.P. Singh
of Singh Exports, which in the early 1980s,
was the only reputed buying agency serving
the C&A Group of stores in Europe. Though
Major Singh is way past active business,
his bunch of freshers are now spread all
over the industry, imbibed with a sense of
purpose and dedication.
Among the more recent ones, some
popular names include Major GS Madan,
MD, Madan Trading Company, Delhi;
Col. K. Christopher, CEO of RB Knit
Exports, Ludhiana; Captain Kavita
Ahlawat, Co-Founder at EMBiQ
Technovations, Gurgaon; and Group
Captain Mohonto Panging of Elam
Industries. Apparel Online discussed with
some of them and found that specialization
in managing the manpower and strong
discipline is something of an advantage
for armed personnel when they work in
apparel sector.
Major Madan, a veteran of apparel industry
and also associated with many trade
associations, gave 17 years of his life to
Indian army before taking premature
retirement as a Major. He also served as an
instructor in Gunnery School and Indian
Military Academy and soon left as his
father asked him to join business. Sharing
his philosophy with AO, he said, “I never
went after money in my life, but preferred
‘quality life’. The biggest advantage of
having an army background is that we are
trained to deal with people, and in garment
export business also, one of the major
tasks is dealing with people only. Like, in
my company, I have at least 50 people who
joined with me and are still on the roll even
after almost 4 decades. Now I am planning
to give them a ‘golden handshake’. Apart
from this, ‘disciplined life’ is also one of the
biggest assets.”
Not only as entrepreneurs, but some ex-
armed professionals are also working at top
levels in some good factories. One of the best
examples of the same is Col. Christopher,
who is also a veteran of 1971 war. Having
a strong army background, he joined RB
Knit Exports, Ludhiana as CEO on the very
next day of his retirement (nearly 10 years
ago), and till date is managing the business
very well. In fact when Christopher became
Colonel, there were only 600 Colonels in the
army. Very clear about his vision, he shared
with AO team: “I have been managing and
leading 20,000 people or even more, so for
me managing a factory and its labour is
a ‘left-hand job’. In army, we motivate our
people to follow us, and even die for the
country. So it becomes very easy in civil life
or anywhere to tell them to do this job and
get this (salary/award).”
Christopher further continued, “Army
is a beautiful organization; it gives you
not only the exposure of managing the
enemy, but also teaches you how to manage
civilians. And for that we had a civilian
personal management school in which a
total different approach and systems were
taught. I was part of College of Material
Management (CMM), Jabalpur where
I did my course of Civilian Personnel
Management. You have to get conversant
with rules and regulations, because one
has to know how to govern the armed forces
personnel, and for which there are set rules
and regulations. Likewise, there are many
acts as far as factories or civilians are
concerned. I studied all things related to
factories, customs and trade after I joined.
So, I am managing very finely.”
He concluded by saying that whenever a
problem or issue arises, one must know
whom to contact. Indian Union has a
beautiful system to select its officials, and
they are competent enough to do their job.
They are also well aware that if they will
not do their job, somebody else will do it.
I follow the procedure properly which I
learnt from army. ‘Human touch’ is very
important and one has to apply for the same,
understanding their feelings and problems.
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