New Delhi / Bahadurgarh, Aug 30: Asian Footwears, India’s leading sports footwear brand, opened its Bahadurgarh manufacturing complex to the media today to mark National Small Industry Day, observed on 30 August. The company manufactures footwear in India and works with a strong network of domestic suppliers, most of whom are MSMEs.
Every single component used in the shoes is sourced from over 300 Indian suppliers, most of them are MSME. On a day that exists to honour small enterprise, the company chose to demonstrate rather than describe what ‘Vocal for Local’ looks like on a working shop floor.
The company employs a healthy ratio of men and women employees, with women forming a significant part of the shop-floor workforce. The company encourages women’s participation on the shop floor and is committed to gender diversity goals.
Asian Footwears started 30 years ago as a small workshop funded with borrowed money. Most businesses celebrating ‘National Small Industry Day’, share the same humble beginning. Today company holds a portfolio of over 2,500 styles and produces more than 15 lakh pairs a month. The company has a strong in-house R&D and reaches customers through over 30,000 multi-brand and over 75 exclusive brand outlets across the country.
Speaking during the walkthrough, Mr. Rajinder Jindal, Founder and Chairman, Asian Footwears, said, “I started with one workshop and money I had borrowed. Everything this company stands on today was built by small industries, the mould-maker, the sole moulder, the man who prints our boxes. So, when we say ‘Vocal for Local’, we are not repeating a slogan, we are reading out our own supplier list.
MSMEs contribute 31.1% of India’s GDP and 35.4% of its manufacturing output, and are the country’s second-largest source of employment after agriculture, with more than 38.9 crore people employed. We try to encourage and support MSMEs through our supplier network and manufacturing ecosystem.
“The policy direction has genuinely helped us,” Mr. Jindal added. “When GST on footwear came down to five per cent for anything under Rs 2,500, it covered almost our entire range, which means the relief reached exactly the customer we build for, in a tier-2 or tier-3 town. The one thing still pending is components. A small unit making outsoles or insoles is taxed at 18 per cent while the finished shoe is at 5 per cent. If their GST is also aligned to 5%, thousands of micro and small manufacturers would feel the improvement in their working capital almost immediately.