Tirupur's $6B garment export industry is powered by 600,000 workers
Subroto Bagchi · Stories from India’s heartland that tell Different story than GDP headlines |Subroto Bagchi,Mindtree · Sep 26, 2025 · at 9:45
Mindtree co-founder Subroto Bagchi discusses the scale and workforce demographics of Tirupur's garment export industry while serving as chair of the Odisha Skill Development Authority.
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“Tirupur actually is a municipal town, ok, not even a city. It produced almost like six billion dollars of government exports for India. It's done by close to 600,000 workers. Half of them are from Tamil Nadu. And half of them are migrant workers from Bihar and Chhattisgarh and UP and Odisha. So out of that half, 50% come from Odisha. And 98% of government workers are women who are school dropouts.”
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