Shahi was founded by the visionary Mrs. Sarla Ahuja in 1974 to create a source of income and sustenance for women through a small home-grown business. Beginning her journey as a sewing machine operator in a garment factory, she honed her entrepreneurial skills to turn her dream into a reality. Over 48 years, Shahi has now grown to employ a 115,000+ diverse and strong workforce across 50+ factories in nine states in India, working with the world’s biggest brands. Today, Shahi is India’s largest apparel manufacturer and exporter of ready-made garments.
Shahi’s cutting-edge vertically integrated textile operations manufacture a variety of products. Its mills produce woven and knitted fabrics using high-quality cotton and yarn from our spinning mill and responsible suppliers. Approximately 80% of Shahi’s textile mills’ capacity feeds into our garment factories to create apparel delivered worldwide. Together, its in-house design and laboratory teams seamlessly deliver a design-to-product service that, coupled with vertical integration, creates visibility and enhances quality from fiber to fashion.
With evolving capacity, capability, and expertise over the years, Shahi presently delivers world-class products to the global consumer base. Shahi currently has one spinning mill with a capacity to manufacturer 11,005 tonnes of yarn and 2,480 tonnes in open-end spinning. The company has knitting mill with a capacity of 12,070 tonnes of knitted fabric and fabric processing capacity of 11,005 tonnes.
Shahi has 2 weaving and processing mills with capacity of 75 million meters of woven fabric and 85 million meters fabric processing capacity. In Garmenting, Shahi has 14 mills with a capacity of 52 million pieces ladies’ garments, 18 factories with 72 million pieces for knitted garments and 19 factories with a capacity of 55 million pieces for Men bottoms and denim division.
Shahi Exports presented its first Sustainability report in which Mr. Harish Ahuja, Chairperson and Managing Director shares his thoughts and perspectives on the company’s focus on Sustainability.
“For nearly five decades, right from when my mother started the company as a small home workshop, Shahi has put people and the planet at the forefront of business strategy. Sustainability has remained a key pillar of success over the years. In a fast-changing global environment, our “Responsible For” framework guides our actions in line with our values. Our key stakeholders, such as our customers, employees, business partners, suppliers, and civil society organizations, support us in achieving our goals.
At a time when natural resources are fast depleting, and climate changes are intensifying, Shahi recognizes that to future-proof our business and continue providing high-quality employment to over 115,000 people—revitalizing our planet is absolutely necessary and urgent. That’s why we have set ambitious goals to achieve 100% renewable electricity by 2026 and use 85% recycled water in garment washing by 2024.
However, we cannot achieve our goals alone; the global industry must rise together to elevate towards sustainability. In 2021, we collaborated with one of our customers to achieve the highest standard for circularity by becoming India’s first woven apparel and textiles manufacturer to create Cradle to Cradle Certified® Gold products. Our focus on innovation continues as we partner with academia, innovators, and NGOs to research and identify novel solutions to the immense challenges of this industry.
The past year remained challenging. As we recovered from the COVID-19 disruptions of 2020, India faced a destructive second wave of the pandemic in the middle of 2021. With a strained healthcare system, we knew we had to play a proactive role in supporting our employees through this unprecedented time. We set up vaccination camps in factories and offices to vaccinate nearly 100% of our workforce across the country in partnership with local health services, NGOs, and private and public hospitals.
Moreover, we ensured our medical dispensaries were stocked with essential medicines and oxygen cylinders. Our Migration Support Center was open to migrants across industries for medical, residential, and vaccination support. Despite these hurdles, we continued to support our employees’ development. In fact, we surpassed our target of training 58,000 women by 2024 in Gap Inc. P.A.C.E., a soft skills training for female workers, and delivered the training to over 70,000 women in FY 2021.
Our focus on creating a safe and respectful work environment remains undeterred as we continue to expand frameworks like the Social and Labor Convergence Program (SLCP) and access to digital grievance redressal mechanisms to 100% of our factories by 2024.
Our influence and responsibility extend beyond our factory walls, reaching out to the communities in which we operate and other vulnerable groups. We have trained 44,000 women from rural and disadvantaged backgrounds in sewing skills, and our efforts in skill development will continue to be accelerated.
Sustainable Denims
Shahi’s Bengaluru-based denim garments units with laundry have a production capacity of 12 million pieces per year. These units have adopted measures to reform how denim is made. Some of these denim units are already Zero Liquid Discharge units. By deploying best-in-class technologies such as e-Flow and G2 Ozone, the material-liquid ratio (MLR) has reduced from 1:6 to 1:1. Through these measures, Shahi uses 30 liters of water on average per pair of jeans, compared to the industry average of 60-80 liters per pair. We have maximized the use of recycled water in denim production, reducing our dependence on freshwater for this process.
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CLOSING THE LOOP ON FABRIC WASTE
Shahi segregated its cotton waste (100% in composition) and shared it with Usha Yarns for mechanical recycling. The recycled cotton fiber was then combined with recycled polyester blended yarns and delivered back to Shahi for knitting, finishing, and garment production. The project proved economically viable for manufacturers and recyclers as it enabled higher quality recycled products. Shahi recycled 38,447 kg, or 84,761 pounds, of cotton-cutting waste through this partnership.