Haren Textiles is a fully integrated family owned Textile Mill, serving for last 54 years, since 1964. Its lineage starts with Ambika Silk Mills whose history dates to 1939. Today Haren is actively managed by professional managers and the members of its third and fourth generation, with their own sets of skills and managerial expertise. Simple yet effective operational measurement through Key Performance Indicators has enabled this company to withstand the challenges this industry faces. The company has grown by learning the importance of anticipating rather than fixing problems, forecasting rather than being forced to act, thinking collectively rather than individually.
Headquartered in Mumbai, the brand owns two mills in Tarapur with the workforce of a team of approximately 445 people. The entire fabric, from the Yarn to the Finished Dyed and Coated fabric is made fully in-house, using West German Warp-Knitting Technologies & Water-Jet Technologies. Haren makes both Apparel and Non-Apparel fabrics. All fabrics are specification driven. It has moved fully away from the ‘subjective’ descriptive fabrics to more sophisticated, complicated, technically engineered fabric, whether it’s for the soft Lingerie underwear business, or the special breathable waterproof fabric, or fabrics for our country’s Military and Defence.
Moved by Make in India
Harit Mehta, Member of the Board of Directors of Haren, and his team, take responsibility to sell fabrics to the large global garment and athletic brands that manufacture and sell in India and to these global brands which make the finished goods in India for exports to international global markets.
The company has taken the ‘Make in India’ campaign very seriously. It often competes directly with those who import fabrics into India. To achieve this, immense effort and additions of new machines, new technologies, expansion and addition of its excellent Quality Assurance facilities, which can often do all the tests in-house, that third-party labs such as SGS, TUV, INTERTEK etc. can do. Enabling comfort in doing business with Indian Mills and with India itself, while moving away from China as their primary source of textiles, is Haren’s constant focus.
The ‘Make in India’ efforts and its large investments have seen new vistas of ‘Indianizing’ many of the same specialty fabrics, which were hitherto being imported by large local exporters and domestic industry segments all these years, is now made here in India.
Get Set Strategize
It is a remarkable zero debt company, which is another rarity in the Textile Mills, both large and small. Haren is very careful in selecting where to invest, who it does business with and how much capacity it allocates to which customer segments.
Haren has grown into a 100% sustainable manufacturing facility in full compliance with US and European environmental norms. It is amongst the few large mills that received the SA8000 [Social Accountability Management System from UK Cert & Inspection, in 2018].
The serious efforts of the Indian Customs Dept, in enforcing the law, ensuring legal lawful compliance, has shuttered many traders and importers. Haren believes in not seeing each other as competition, but to look to beat the textile supplying nations and compete with their mills, their fabrics and their channels of distributing.
Haren reminds its people that in the Olympics, individuals compete but the Team wins. In same way each of the large, medium and even small companies of India should identify and compete in targeted product segments, user segments, and chip away one by one so that the entire Industry succeeds as a whole.
Awards and Recognition
Haren Textiles has received an Award of Excellence from the Dept. of Space ISRO for the successful development, implementation and supply of a fabric, which was threatened to delay the launch of India’s Communication and Remote Sensing Satellite Programme, as the supplying country suddenly suggested it could not supply due to geopolitical events. This spurred Team Haren into action.
Growth and Future Possibility
Haren’s view is, India’s Textile industry is poised for serious growth. The GST has been excellent as it has seen smaller, non-committed manufacturers exit the business. Those who remain will become stronger and larger. A great movement is seen that the companies who were depending on China or the Far East for their fabrics, have begun sourcing from India.
American brands are coming to India to source garments and finished goods made from locally sourced fabrics, made to their International specifications. Thus, Haren recommends that this is the best time for the entire textile industry to move collectively and diligently to meet this demand.
Haren has seen the quality of student graduates from textile institutes, in great need of direction and employability. Haren works closely with these colleges. It attempts to recommend what skills are needed today and what will be needed in the future, to make these students become employable upon graduation. Firmly believing that it’s only when good quality modern technical education is imparted, the industry will survive and grow and these textile engineering students get jobs. The Mills of Haren are increasingly managed by its younger generations, who carry no baggage of the past as they look to the future.
“…Stay with what you know best, be ethical, compete with outsiders, not each other, genuinely try to be consistent in all you do, and be quick, be good, and its ok to be second. It’s a large ocean out there; one cannot drink more than one’s cup..”, says Mr Harit Mehta
Creating Green Industry
Haren continues to invest and stay invested in 100% Polyester and 100% Nylon fabrics. Keeping the social awareness intact, the need to protect one’s environment propels its investment in renewable energy. The company makes sure water [target 90% recycling] and solar [100% of its weaving plant] takes place to lower its cost of manufacturing and reduce its carbon footprint.
Source :-The 10 Most Admired Companies in Textile Industry
Haren Textiles: Redefining Indian Textile Industry – A 79 Year Legacy
