At Bharat Tex 2026, the panel “MMF: Raw Material for an Emerging Textile Ecosystem – How Will India Meet Future Fiber Demand?” panelists representing much of the MMF value chain, were joined by Manisha Chattajee, joint secretary, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, who offered the government perspective. Together they tackled a question increasingly important to India’s textile ambitions: can the country build the man-made fiber (MMF) ecosystem necessary to compete in a global market increasingly shaped by performance, synthetic blends and sustainability?
This is the test of India’s MMF ambition. Rather than volume, the next phase of growth will be determined by whether the country can connect raw materials to high-value products—and capture more of that value at home.
With global textile demand changing, application-specific performance has become increasingly important, even as supply-chain resilience and sustainability are impacting fiber choices. Along with that, the conversation is moving beyond the traditional natural-versus-synthetic debate toward responsibly produced fibers, recycled polyester and bio-based feedstocks.
For India, that presents an opportunity—and a challenge. The government has already deployed measures including the PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) scheme and National Technical Textiles Mission, but building capacity is just one part of the equation. The larger challenge is creating an ecosystem that delivers cost competitiveness, quality, innovation and sustainability.
Beyond Commodity Fibers
India’s ambitions require considerably more fiber capacity, but composition matters just as much as volume, stressed Udeep Singh, chairman, National Council of Textiles and Technical Textiles.
“To achieve what we have targeted—$350 billion textile economy and hundred billion dollars of export—we need an addition of 10 to 12 million tons of total fiber, including cotton and MMF,” he said.
India’s bigger challenge is moving beyond basic polyester toward value-added fibers across polyester, nylon and other derivatives.
Rather than producing every fiber domestically, which won’t necessarily achieve economies of scale, he said the country must focus on ensuring that specialty materials like nylon 66 for sports and technical textiles are available at globally competitive prices.
This is especially important as India looks to expand in performance textiles, an area where access to specialty materials can determine global competitiveness.
The Performance Paradigm
Maneesh Kumar, chief operating officer, CIEL Textile, illustrated the industry’s evolution. “Fifteen years back all our golf t-shirts were cotton. Today none of them are cotton,” he said. “Does that mean cotton is going away? Absolutely not. Fibers are complementary, with fashion and performance determining the eventual choice.”
And while earlier polyester carried a reputation for being uncomfortable, “fantastic innovation has happened,” helping bridge the gap between natural and man-made fibers.
The next generation of MMF will achieve even more.
“The customer not only wants a fabric to wear, he wants functionality—performance, touch, feel, stretch, moisture management, the UV resistance, antimicrobial,” said Dinesh Keswani, director of business development & technical, Hyosung India Pvt. Ltd. Not to mention recycled and circular material streams.
Sustainability has also become more important, and polyester recycling has evolved beyond recycling PET bottles toward recovering polyester and cellulose from used garments themselves.
MMF vs Cotton is a False Argument
But as global synthetic demand increases, India’s transition should not be framed as cotton versus MMF.
“We don’t think that these fibers are competing against each other or that one fiber will replace the other,” said Gurpreet Singh, CGM Yarn Operations, Vardhman Textiles Ltd. Cotton will remain India’s strength, he said, with the transition to functional yarns and fibers, performance fabrics and sustainable MMF alternatives “growing gradually not overnight.”
Anil Rajbanshi, vice chairman of MATEXIL (Man-Made and Technical Textiles Export Promotion Council), put the transition in historical context, where India was initially a cotton-producing and cotton-consuming economy. “Structural reforms came very late for the MMF industry,” contributing to the sector’s historical disadvantage. Today, MMF accounts for roughly 73% to 74% of the global textile and apparel market, compared with just 22% to 23% for cotton.
The next opportunity lies not only in polyester but in advanced materials such as carbon fiber. Notably, Reliance Industries has applied under PLI for the highly capital-intensive technology.
“I expect government support in buying this for all their defense and aeronautical applications,” he said, noting such demand could help the project become commercially viable.
The Downstream, Value-Add Gap
If upstream capacity is one part of the MMF challenge, downstream value addition remains a weak link.
Asked whether, despite substantial investment and innovation upstream, there is a gap that we see in the ecosystem on the downstream side, Rajbanchi pointed to Gujarat’s experience of retaining more value within the state and argued that Surat’s huge fabric production should similarly feed a larger garment industry.
“We have to develop an ecosystem where 90% of that fabric which is going outside Gujarat should be converted into garments within Gujarat so that the value addition takes place,” he said.
Characterizing the downstream MMF industry “very weak,” he called for a stronger system to convert fiber and cotton into fabric and ultimately garments—the stage “where the highest value addition takes place.”
To keep a weak link from thwarting a whole system, Chattajee encourages companies to move further downstream, with “companies making yarn considering fabric; and fabric makers considering finished garments.” A nonwoven producer, for example, could potentially move into medical-hygiene products to capture more value and better meet PLI objectives.
“In speaking to Indian Ambassadors to Europe, one thing that came out was quality,” she said. “And somehow we seem to have lost that vis-a-vis Bangladesh and the other countries.”
The Policy Assist
For the government, the challenge is to support the ecosystem without dictating every commercial outcome.
Chattajee acknowledged that the PLI scheme has had “its hiccups,” but the ministry is working to put it “back on track” with policy parameters changed or further considered. At the same time, the government is examining the MMF value chain in detail, including areas such as nylon, while using the National Technical Textiles Mission to support startups and R&D.
The opportunity is to build a textile system in which specialty materials, yarn innovation, fabric development, garmenting, technical applications and recycling reinforce one another. As Chattajee put it, “what we should try to achieve is the finished good, and a quality finished good.”
