Almost 25 minutes’ drive from Coimbatore airport brings one to the factory of Carnation Creations, a leading manufacturer of a variety of fashionable knitted apparel, which has a beautiful view of the hills of Ooty but the real beauty of the leading apparel manufacturer is its worker-friendly policies. Akhilesh Anand, a Niftian and the man behind this successful business, had the vision to establish a factory at this particular place so that he can manage local workers from nearby villages and can create a good working culture, rather than just follow the set system of Tirupur which majorly depends on the migratory workforce. In discussion with Team Apparel Resources (AR) which was recently in the factory, Akhilesh shared details of his various initiatives and the force behind the same.
It’s one o’clock and hot lunch for the factory’s workers has come from outside. Hardly 50 metres away from the sewing floor, the neat and clean canteen of the company serves food at concessional rates to the workers. At the same time, lights are off on the shopfloor and cleaning is in process so that when workers are back to work, they again have a clean working area.
Not only from the human aspect, the company, using solar power, is also seriously dedicated to the planet as it has an impressive rainwater harvesting system where water for three years is already stored. It also uses packaging material made out of sustainable ‘Maize’ fibre. The organisation is neither using groundwater nor supply from the local corporation. Moving forward, it also has a plan to start bio-toilets.
The shopfloor, having advanced sewing and allied machines, is full of fresh air and ensures cross ventilation as it is quite open from one side and there are large windows on the other side. Not only this, several high-volume, low-speed fans are also installed here. The floor outside and in fact, the entire factory premises, spread across four acres, have plants that give more oxygen. All this ensures comfortable working conditions for all workers.
The company has a workforce of around 1000 and all of them are on payroll. Interestingly 98 per cent of workers in the factory are women and all are locals which is rare in this region’s garment factories. Supervisors and Production Managers working in the factory are also women. The company even invested in workers’ technical as well as soft skills training as most of them were freshers before joining the company.
“In daily routine, the company’s thrust is on reuse in whatever possible like reusing the paper envelope. We take care of every small thing as it creates a big difference,” Akhilesh Anand
Along with basic infrastructure and polices, the vision of the company management is also supportive for workers as Akhilesh informed, “For us, consistency and integrity of the workers is priority. Integrity is most important for Carnation. It’s a win-win situation for both workers and the company. We work in harmony and believe to invest in manpower and take care of our force as our workers are a priority for us.”
And this reflects in the company’s strategy and policies as Carnation Creations believes that productivity can be managed if the workers are consistent. The company doesn’t ask them to work beyond 5.30 pm, so the workers can have enough time for themselves and their family also. It ensures that the manpower is happy and comes daily to work for better performance. Losing even one day will drop productivity and so it is important to create a system that keeps absenteeism low.
Apart from its workers, Carnation Creations is also supporting society as the company is also associated with an NGO, which takes the leftover fabric (katrans) for further development of rugs. “For me, it’s not business, it is a way of life as my target is to touch the life of 50,000 families and we are on right track,” said Akhilesh.
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
