V. Sudhakar Chowdary

The ten-millionth spindle

At India ITME in Mumbai in 2017, the German spindle maker Spindelfabrik Suessen marked a milestone: the ten-millionth EliTe compact spinning spindle it had ever made. It chose to present that spindle to one customer, V. Sudhakar Chowdary. His company was already running more than 55,000 of them.

Twelve years earlier he had not yet spun a single thread. In early 2005 he was a production engineer running his family's fertiliser trade, studying a venture in steel. One conversation with a friend turned him towards cotton, and within a month he had made up his mind.

That same year The Textile Magazine put his company on its cover as India's fastest-growing textile manufacturer. This is the story of how he got there, told through the record he has left: the mills, the numbers, the people, and his own words.

His story

From trade to thread

Eight chapters, from a family trading business to one of India's integrated textile groups.

Chapter IRoots

A maker among traders

Sudhakar Chowdary is the son of Sri Vallabhaneni Mohan Rao garu, today the Chairman of Mohan Spintex. He studied production engineering, the discipline of how things are made, and then joined the family's fertiliser distribution business, which he ran until 2004. Under his management the family trade grew from about ₹60 lakh in 1992 to ₹70 crore by 2004.

He has been candid that it never fully satisfied him. It was, in his words, "still a trading business." That restlessness, the wish to manufacture and not merely to trade, is where Mohan Spintex begins.

₹60 lakh to ₹70 crore in twelve years, and still he wanted more than trade.

Chapter II2005

Steel, or thread

In 2005 the choice in front of him was steel. He and a colleague had been studying re-rolling and even a blast furnace when a chance meeting with a friend already in textiles turned their thoughts to spinning. The timing was right: government policy, including the abolition of excise duty, had begun to favour the sector.

They met in March 2005 and decided within the month. Mohan Spintex India Limited was incorporated in Vijayawada on 11 May 2005.

One meeting in March. One decision before the month was out.

Chapter III2006 – 2008

The first spindles

Commercial production began in October 2006 at Vattigudipadu: six ring frames of 1,200 spindles each, 7,200 spindles in all, with machinery from Lakshmi Machine Works from blowroom to ring frame. LMW would go on to equip every spinning project he built.

He did not wait. Capacity doubled to 14,400 spindles in 2007, the year Murata Machinery began supplying the company. A second phase broke ground the same year and was finished by April 2008, taking Unit 1 to 30,000 spindles. Within two years every one of them had been converted to compact spinning.

From 7,200 spindles to 30,000 in eighteen months.

Chapter IV2009 – 2013

The mega project

In August 2009 he took a 40,000-spindle plan to the company's bankers. They approved it in October. The plan then grew, adding twisting, open-end spinning and cotton ginning, until it qualified under the government's mega project scheme.

Civil work began at Remalle in February 2010 and commercial operations started in March 2011. By January 2012 Unit 2 stood complete: 44,064 spindles, 4,576 open-end rotors, 1,920 TFO drums and 36 gins. It was inaugurated that year.

A plan in August. Approval in October. A finished mill in under three years.

Unit 2, Remalle, at its inauguration in 2012

Chapter V2013 – 2016

Reaching for the finished product

Yarn was never meant to be the end of it. In 2013 he proposed a third project, with looms and an Uster testing laboratory alongside the spindles. Unit 3 went into production in April 2015 with 38,304 spindles and 90 air-jet looms; a second phase in October 2016 added 9,120 spindles, 1,696 rotors, 2,880 TFO drums and 66 more looms. It was the company's first step into weaving, and he explained it with an engineer's logic:

"Until and unless you reach the end of the finished product, your total system is not complete."

By early 2017 the company ran more than 1,25,000 spindles and 125 air-jet looms, employed about 2,800 people and exported close to half its output, to Bangladesh, Pakistan, China and Europe. That February The Textile Magazine put Mohan Spintex on its cover as "India's fastest growing textile manufacturer".

Chapter VI2017 – 2020

Fibre to finished

The next step completed the chain. Unit 4 at Mallavalli was inaugurated in 2019, and by March 2020 its programme was complete: 168 more looms, a processing plant finishing 1,00,000 metres of fabric a day, and a cut, make and trim unit sewing 10,000 sheet sets a day. Weaving capacity rose to 90,000 metres a day.

In 2020 the company launched its own home-textile brand, Astara. Cotton that entered the group as fibre could now leave it as a finished product carrying the company's own name.

Spinning, weaving, processing, home textiles: the system, complete.

Chapter VII2022 – 2023

Trusted by the world

With scale came the attention of the most demanding buyers in the world. IKEA audited the company in 2022 and its team visited again in 2023. The Italian linen house Frette came to see the plants in 2022.

In July 2022 a 10.8 MW rooftop solar plant began generating power at Remalle. By then the company employed about 5,500 people, and 45% of them were women. The Textile Magazine described its founder as "a young and dynamic entrepreneur".

5,500 livelihoods. Nearly half of them women.

Chapter VIII2025 – 2026

The next twenty years

Twenty years on, the building has not stopped. In 2026 the company added 39,936 spindles, taking its total to 1,61,424. A foundation was laid for a new corporate office; the LEAD programme, Leadership Excellence & Development, brought the company's leaders together; and Union Textiles Minister Shri Giriraj Singh visited the Mallavalli unit.

In 2025 the company opened Mohan's Sri Vijnana Vihara School. And a new generation has joined: his children, V. Suhruth Chowdary and Keyura, have become directors, bringing an emphasis on digitalisation, analytics and modern management.

Twenty years in, the founder is still adding spindles.

With Union Textiles Minister Shri Giriraj Singh, Mallavalli, 2026

Chairman of KRIBHCO

The young man who once ran a fertiliser distribution business now leads one of India's largest fertiliser cooperatives.

Beyond textiles, he has long been active in India's cooperative movement. He served as Vice Chairman of Krishak Bharati Cooperative (KRIBHCO) before, in September 2025, he was elected its Chairman unopposed: both top posts drew single nominations.

Back at Mohan Spintex, employees came to greet their Managing Director on his new responsibility.

Honours & media