Spinning Success
WHY HE WON Made full use of PM Modi’s 5F or farmer to fashion policy, processing locally produced cotton into fine yarn
His is a rags to riches story like no other. Son of a poor farmer from Nandpur village in Kalawad tehsil of Jamnagar district in Gujarat, Ashok Dudhagra would often go to bed hungry as a student of BSc in chemistry in Kotak College, Rohtak, in the ’90s.
Cut to now and Asok Dudhagra’s ultra-modern spinning mill near Kalawad, employing 250 people and set up at a cost of Rs 75 crore in 2014, hopes to post a turnover of Rs 200 crore next year with an additional investment of Rs 60 crore. His fine cotton yarn is exported to over half-a-dozen countries today, including the US, China and Vietnam, while his Indian clientele includes Siyaram Suitings, Donear Suitings, Vicky Fashion and Lalita Export.
After stints in the equity markets and real estate, he, along with a partner, set up a cotton ginning factory in 2014 near Kalavad at a cost of Rs 2.6 crore. Then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s textile policy in 2011 fuelled his ambition further. “Called the 5F policy, from farmers to fashion, the policy gave terrific concessions for encouraging processing of cotton locally,” he says. A trip to a friend’s factory did the rest. “The only cars coming out of there were Jaguars and Porsches and BMWs. I realised this is where the money was.”