CHENNAI: House of Pearl Fashions Limited, a Rs. 800 crore multinational apparel company, plans to set up a second unit in Tamil Nadu. The company will be investing Rs. 44 crore in this project, which will come up on Sipcot land at Irungattukottai near here.

In an interview to The Hindu, Deepak Seth, Group Chairman of House of Pearl Fashions, said the second factory would come up on a five-acre land and have 2,000 machines. The company put up a 1,000-machine plant at the MEPZ Special Economic Zone last year by investing Rs. 25 crore. The facility has a capacity to produce three million units annually. Mr. Seth said both the facilities would be manufacturing dress pants, trousers, denim wears and wrinkle free pants. The company's factories in the North would focus on making tops such as shirts and blouses.

Mr. Seth said the company was planning to set up a unit in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, with an investment of Rs. 35 crore. It was planning an IPO (initial public offering). A part of the funds thus raised would be used for setting up retail chains.

The company is at present operating ten modern ready-to-wear apparel-manufacturing facilities. Six units are located in North India, one in Chennai, two in Bangladesh and one in Indonesia. It also has a financial interest in a manufacturing unit China.

Mr. Seth said costs were going up in China but in India these were lower.

To tap this opportunity, the House of Pearl Fashions had set up a sourcing and distribution business in Hong Kong. This was then expanded to Bangladesh and China. It had also made strategic acquisitions in the U.K. and the U.S. House of Pearl Fashions had set up a wholly owned subsidiary in the U.S. — House of Pearl Fashions U.S. Inc. — which focuses on marketing and establishing supply chain alliances with global brands based in North America.

The group had set up Pearl Academy of Fashion in New Delhi, Jaipur and Chennai. There were plans to establish similar academies in Ludhiana, Dhaka, and the UAE. Next year, the company was planning to start a Pearl School of Business, for which it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Babson College, Boston.

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