Four years after pulling out a mammoth investment plan from Kerala and shifting focus to Telangana, Kitex Garments, one of the largest children’s clothing manufacturers in the world, is being wooed again by a State Government. The state in question this time around is Andhra Pradesh.
In an effort to attract Kitex to locate its operations in the state, Andhra Pradesh Textiles Minister S. Savitha will visit the headquarters of the firm in Kizhakkambalam, Kochi. The Minister will present a formal invitation from Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu to Kitex Managing Director Sabu M. Jacob to visit Amaravati and meet him in person.
Sabu said that they currently have no plans for investments in Andhra Pradesh, but the Chief Minister appears to be quite eager to attract new industrial investments.
The action follows Kitex’s dramatic pullout from a Rs. 3,500 crore (US $ 408 million) project offered at Kerala’s Ascend Global Investment Meet in 2020. The pullout came after what Sabu termed constant harassment by different state departments, with an outburst of 11 official raids in June 2021 alone.
In a dramatic reversal of fortunes that year, then-Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had a chartered plane flown to fetch Sabu to Hyderabad. That call initiated the beginning of a major shift for Kitex, which later on set up large-scale integrated manufacturing units in Hyderabad and Warangal.
Sabu has since praised Telangana’s assistance, pointing out that the state prominently placed the Kitex investment as one of its major success stories at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos.
The extent of Kitex’s expansion in Telangana is impressive. The Warangal plant, which opened its doors in April, has already hired 15,000 personnel and will be operational at full capacity by December 2025. When its Hyderabad operations are online, Kitex expects to give employment to 50,000 workers.
Sabu also referred to wider tailwinds favouring the growth of the company: geopolitical uncertainties surrounding Bangladesh and free trade negotiation talks between India and the European Union have created fresh windows of opportunity for Kitex in the international garment industry.
With Andhra Pradesh also joining the fray, Kitex Garments finds itself once again in the middle of a high-stakes race among states competing for marquee industrial investments.
