Today, the company has diversified into the home textile segment, producing bed linen, comforters and duvets for residential retail markets using 100 per cent cotton, linen, modal, tencel and blends. Visalakshi Kannan, Director, VTM, offers her insights on navigating legacy and reinvention in a rapidly evolving global market.
The Differentiator
When Visalakshi took charge in 2019 and diversified the VTM portfolio by introducing the home textile division, there were many big players. To put it in Visalakshi’s words, “the question was how to enter late and still win”. The answer came from removing the middlemen in the supply chain. Unlike other players, VTM dismantled the middleman model that involved additional costs, time and the dilution, ultimately affecting the relationship between the manufacturer and buyer. VTM invested in direct to consumer model reaching consumers all over the world, leveraging consumer data, thereby eliminating insufficiencies in the supply chain. Entering a saturated market, this Direct to Consumer Model became a clear differentiator. “Our rapid growth came from deliberately disrupting a flawed supply chain,” highlights Visalakshi.
Navigating Geopolitics
This approach has constantly shaped how VTM responds to uncertainties. With global trade disruptions due to tariffs, several textile companies failed. VTM used the difficult time to explore, expand and conduct research and surprisingly, the mill grew during this period. They sharpened focus on premium and performance-oriented bed and bath products and tightened cost-control measures to protect margins and inflationary pressures. “When you can’t go to sea, mend your nets,” adds Visalakshi, a philosophy the company has consistently followed. This mindset has also contributed to VTM becoming a more data-oriented company, investing in AI-driven analytics to identify actionable patterns in production and logistics. While labour shortages remain a long-standing challenge in the sector, such measures offer some respite. At the same time, VTM ensures that its workforce is trained to operate and adapt to these technologies.
Addressing the gap
This focus on efficiency and resilience naturally led the company to look beyond operations and address deeper structural gaps in the industry like sustainability and traceability. Building on this, VTM incorporates alternative fibres such as pineapple and banana into its products, aligning with evolving consumer preferences for sustainability. At its core, the company prioritises not marketing claims, but measurable impact. This approach has naturally extended into how its products are tracked and verified. Like pigments embedded in currency notes, a traceable identifier is infused in cotton. A single scan reveals the product’s entire journey from farm to finished good. As Visalakshi explains, “the ID lives on a blockchain. Spin it, weave it, dye it, stitch it, the cotton’s journey is recorded within it.” What was once a differentiator is now becoming a requirement for a growing segment of global buyers. The advantage of Thiagarajar Mills, being the largest cotton yarn producer, strengthened this effort. “We integrated vertically and it allowed us to innovate right at the fibre level itself,” notes Visalakshi Kannan.
This has enhanced VTM’s competitiveness in global markets with its presence today in the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Germany. The company is exploring diversified sourcing strategies for raw materials to optimize tariff benefits while remaining competative in key markets.
“The longevity of a business and a relationship is more important than short-term numbers,” highlights Visalakshi, a philosophy that underpins VTM’s growth. As a publicly listed company, VTM generates approximately Rs 300 crore in revenue, while the Thiagarajar Group as a whole exceeds Rs 1000 crore. Alongside financial growth, the company remains committed to regional development, focusing on employment generation in the Virudhunagar and Madurai areas. It has signed an MoU with the Government of Tamil Nadu to invest Rs 50 crore in manufacturing, innovation and technology which will generate employment for up to 500 people.
Merging the old and the new
The strength of this 80-year-old company lies in its founding vision for uncompromising quality, strong customer service, community focus and sustainability. At the same time, it continues to innovate to stay competitive. Over the next five years, VTM plans to expand into new markets, fibres and geographies while deepening its use of artificial intelligence. To put it in Visalakshi’s words, “straddling the old and the new, the past and the future, is not a tension to be resolved. It is the strategy to move towards success”.