When octogenarian Sarla Ahuja established Shahi Exports way back in 1974, breaking glass ceilings after leaving her job of a sewing machine operator at a local garment factory, little did she know that one day it would go on to become India’s largest apparel manufacturer and exporter, with three fabric processing mills and over 50 state-of-the-art apparel manufacturing facilities across eight states in the country, employing a diverse workforce of nearly one lakh members.
Several years down the road, when Harish Ahuja took up the reins from her mother, who had started her entrepreneurial journey coughing up a paltry sum of Rs 5000, would he have imagined that one day he would be shelling out £21 million ($27 million) for a home in London’s Notting Hill district- one of the year’s biggest UK residential deals, defying a wider slowdown in luxary property sales?
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However cliché it may sound to be, the story of the Ahujas of Shahi Exports, is certainly one of the most inspiring and prominent rags to riches stories in recent times. Harish Ahuja certainly did not have to face the challenges that his mother had to go through while balancing work and family responsibilities, after grabbing the opportunity of working on orders from home with a small team of women. The son must have faced other kinds of challenges of the contemporary business dynamics.
Both of them navigated life’s complexities calmly. The common and continuing factor in the journey of the company over the last fifty years has been the focus on empowering women and making a difference in their communities.
Little wonder therefore, that Shahi Exports, which supplies major international brands like Uniqlo, Decathlon, and H&M, and its owner is not only known to the world for buying a 20,000+ square feet space, which is a short walk from Kensington Gardens and had been previously owned by a UK-registered charity and religious order, for his son Anand Ahuja and daughter-in-law and Bollywood diva- Sonam Kapoor, and converting the rest into apartments, but for other business reasons as well.
Company topbrass points out that one of its differentiators has been its commitments to the employees and development of multifarious training and developmental initiatives covering a range of development training courses that cater to the diversified needs of its employees. Its Leadership Development wing engages its upcoming and high-potential leaders at its corporate offices and factories. The company offers courses on leadership, management, outbound experiential learning, life skills, behavioral and soft skills, multi-dimensional technical skills, and strategic alignment sessions. The company has also institutionalized and streamlined many developmental initiatives through ‘Shahi Academy.’ The Academy is housed in Bangalore. The facility is equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure catering to various training designs.
The apparel manufacturer has recently firmed up a joint venture with Little King Global, a Taiwan synthetic sportswear fabric manufacturer for initiating a processing unit for synthetic fabrics located in Shimoga, Karnataka. The venture also aims at strengthening employment in Shimoga in the manufacturing sector. The new facility will offer recycled, responsive, and resilient services for its valued customers. All such moves are driven by the philosophy of empowering people from the local community and upgrade their skills so that they can move to the next level, top officials point out.
