Bangalore’s Manchester

Bangalore’s Manchester
Deccan Herald

It’s a paradise for seekers of quality textiles at truly affordable budgets. And it’s right here in the City at Srirampuram.

Milk is sold by the litre and cloth is sold by the metre, right? Wrong. At the densely populated Sriramachandrapuram, popularly known as Srirampuram, textiles and other dress materials are sold by the kilo – and it works out cheaper.

The “Mini Manchester” of Bangalore has rows and rows of shops concentrated on 1st Main Sriramachandrapuram, 1st Main Kalappa Block and cross roads.

Everything in textiles is sold here – suitings, shirtings, dress materials, bedding cloths, bedsheets, blankets, bedding materials, pillows, Turkish towels, lungies, dhoties, denim, material for curtains, upholstery and drapery, army fatigues, jackets.

Low overhead costs

Babulal of Mangal Mothi Textiles sells cut pieces for shirtings and suitings with prices ranging from Rs 50 per kg at the lower end to Rs 300 per kg at the higher end depending on the quality. The textiles, priced at Rs 300 per kg, are good enough to make a suit. Depending upon the weight of the cloth, a kilo of cloth could be anything from one metre to five metres,” says Babulal.

“A jacket which will cost you Rs 750 to Rs 1,000 in an upmarket area costs Rs 250 for the same quality as our overheads are less,” he adds.

Gandhi Raj, president of Ramachandrapura Kaimagga Mathu Cut-piece Vyaparigala Sangha, an association of handloom and cut-piece cloth merchants, says there are 350-odd shops here.

“This business has been on in this area over the past 25 years and the association has been in existence for the past 12 years. The shops source their requirements from Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Salem, Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, Bhilwara and Ranipet,” says Raj.

Most of the shop owners live in the area and they belong to different communities – Marwari, Kannadiga, Tamil and Telugu.

Gangadhar of Sri Venkateshwara Enterprises, a shop specialising in handloom and cut-piece cloth, says that people from as far as Gadag come to his shop to buy wholesale. Cotton dress materials sell at Rs 200 per kg while bedding cloth, turkish towels and nightie material sell at Rs 100 to Rs 120 per kg. At Arihant Garments selected garments sell for Rs 300 per kg and you can get something for children weighing 100 grams at Rs 30. Rugs and doormats sell at Rs 15 to 17 per kilo.

The clientele

Who patronises these shops? Housewives, trendy teenagers, tailors, tailoring students, fashion designing students and fashion designers who are on the lookout for unusual material and design, small scale garment manufacturers and retail textile dealers.

There are some speciality shops like Sri Lakshmi Enterprises, which sells only threads for tailoring. And yes, even reels of threads sell by the kilo ranging from Rs 140 to Rs 250 per kg depending on the quality, says Girish who along with his brother Raghav owns this shop. They have customers coming from Raichur, Hubli, Mangalore, Mandya and Mysore.

Manjunath Enterprises specialises in selling rough cloth used for cleaning in garages and industrial cleaning and for packing. The rate is as low as Rs 5 per kg. Dhanam Enterprises sells thick cotton cloth, used by tailors for lining at Rs 150 per kg which works out to 3.5 metres.

The surrounding areas of Srirampuram was once known for its textile mills such as Binny Mills, Minerva Mills and Ramkumar Mills.

This could perhaps be the reason why textile shops mushroomed here. Incidently in 1937 Sriramapuram locality became famous for its ‘Rent Strike’, the only one of its kind for increasing the rent of houses from one-and-a-half rupees to two-and-a-half rupees! Srirampuram is keeping up its reputation with its low prices on clothing, one of the necessities of life.