Hajipur in Bihar is becoming known for making designer shoes for European markets and safety shoes for the Russian army.
Since 2018, Competence Exports, a Hajipur-based private limited business, has started producing these shoes with the main objective of generating jobs in the community.
The company shipped 1.5 million pairs of shoes last year, for a total of Rs 100 crore. This year, they want to boost this by 50%.
The facility’s general manager, Shib Kumar Roy, stated, “Not just in Hajipur, we are India’s largest exporter to Russia, and we expect the numbers to expand day by day.”
HIGHLIGHT OF THE SHOES
According to Roy, the Russian army’s safety shoes are built to be “lightweight, slip-resistant, have special features in the sole, and withstand extreme weather conditions like -40 degrees Celsius.”
VISION OF THE COMPANY
“The primary goal of the Hajipur facility, which we opened in 2018, is to create jobs locally. We produce safety shoes in Hajipur with the intention of exporting them to Russia. All of our exports go to Russia, and we are also gradually expanding into Europe and will shortly make our home market debut,” Roy informed the sources.
Danesh Prasad, the managing director of the company, hopes to create jobs for the state of Bihar and build a world-class plant there. Seventy percent of the facility’s 300 workers are female.
A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE FACTORY:
glimpse of manufacturing of the shoes
UPCOMING GOALS
The Hajipur plant distributes expensive designer or fashion shoes to European markets, such as Italy, France, Spain, and the UK, in addition to safety shoes. Head of the company’s fashion development and marketing Mazhar Pallumiah said that although overseas companies had their doubts at first, they were reassured after seeing prototypes. Next month, the firm anticipates receiving visits from a few companies.
Our goal is to create luxury footwear for global brands. We also recently began talks with a Belgian company,” the company’s head of marketing and fashion development, Mazhar Pallumiah, stated.
Even though the government of Bihar has supported industry, Roy thinks that in order to make it simpler to communicate with Russian buyers, infrastructure improvements—such as better roads and communication—are required. In addition, he highlights the need for skilled labor and recommends establishing a training facility to supply such labor.
“We also want ready-skilled manpower, and for that, a training institute should be set up so that we get skill-ready manpower, otherwise, we have to train the workers before inducting them,” he stated.
This Hajipur success story not only demonstrates Bihar’s potential in the global manufacturing sector, but it also emphasizes how crucial quality, creativity, and local empowerment are to winning over foreign critics.
