Dr Y A Agrawal-Chairman, Jindal Worldwide

Fluctuations in raw material prices have impacted our costing tremendously. Of course, we are fortunate that we have been able to pass on some burden to our customers by hiking the prices of our finished goods. So, our overall margins remain in tact. Besides, we are forced to innovate and come up with some novel cost control exercises. In comparison, Rupee in 2010-11 has stabilized and was not as volatile as it was in preceding 2 years. Little volatility of rupee in 2010-11 did not have much impact on JWL. 

We have best of the professionals working for us who have come with previous experience in all well known and established textile companies. They have brought along with them the time tested prac¬tices prevalent there. We have assimilated their suggestions and along with it our own experience in the industry has helped in developing systems which have given us very good control systems. 

We do have In-house Internal Audit Department where we have employed experienced Chartered Accountants who monitor the existing system and give us input about improvements to be made in the system looking to the technological development taking place all round. 

We all know that Textiles is the second largest employment generating industry in India. We cannot therefore undermine its importance HRM and IR point of view. We have seen that whole of Mumbai Textile Industry was killed just because IR and HRM practices could not keep pace with the chang¬ing times. 

Textile is more of a labour intensive industry and will therefore require utmost care and caution while dealing with the people involved. Hence best of the HRM and IR practices are to be followed for its sustained success. 

For us customer is King and we believe whatever he says. We firmly believe that our success lies in ab¬solute customer satisfaction. We always strive to meet with their expectations as far as quality standards and delivery schedules are concerned. We would never ever expect our customers to suffer because of laxity on our part. Any complaint or suggestion from our customers is immediately attended to and we do not believe in lingering the disputed issues. It is their utmost satisfaction which has helped us to climb the ladder of success and they are the pillars of our all round progress. 

If you look at the three and a half decades history of JWL you will observe that for close to three decades JWL was an export centric company. It was the time when really windfall profits were available for exporters. Hence our thrust was on exports. Since last 5-6 years Do¬mestic economy is growing at a faster clip and in last 2 years growth in the domestic textile market is much-much higher compared to growth in the international market. Looking to the changing scenario we have started concentrating more on domestic market and today the situ-ation is such that export constitutes just 7 per cent of our total revenue. 

Today domestic sales constitute 93 per cent of our total revenue and balance 7 per cent is exports sales. 

What are your capex plans? How are you planning to raise the funds from capital market? 

We have lined up an immediate capex plan of roughly Rs 125 crore in 2011-12. We are increasing our existing denim manufacturing capac¬ity by 60 per cent. We are going for backward integration by installing a spinning plant. We are also going for a captive power plant. We do not have any plans for raising funds from public for above capex. 

We are trying to innovate in our production process. We are doing R& D for the same. We have already undertaken some cost control mea¬sures. We are going for spinning to control rising cost yarn. We also have plans to control our power cost by going for captive power plant. We have already installed texturising machines in our plant which will help us in producing texturising yarn on our own which hitherto we have been outsourcing earlier. Even though we have one of the lowest finance costs in the industry, we are planning to bring it down further by going for innovative financial instruments. All the measures will go a long way in substantially improving our profitability. 

Biggest risk and challenge is obviously inconsistent government policies. Few examples are like suspension of TUF scheme since last 9 months and imposition of 10 per cent duty on all branded garments in the recent budget. Another challenge is the ever increasing cotton prices. They have increased by 150 per cent in last 12 months. Rising interest cost because of monetary and fiscal policies of the Government. 

But the real challenge is to take all these factors in our stride and march forward on the path of progress and prosperity by adhering to stringent quality norms and giving the maximum satisfaction to our customers and other stakeholders. 

We envision achieving global dominance in providing unparalleled quality products and services built around our core values and yet all the while keeping in mind our cost effectiveness. We ensure product escalation through product and technical innovation, customer orientation by providing excellence in service and products to our valued clients and thereby creating a winner.