‘Kicked out of Kerala’, Kitex’s Jacob flies to Hyderabad, commits ₹1,000-cr investment.

Kerala-based textiles major Kitex Group led Chairman and Managing Director Sabu Jacob has announced that it will invest ₹1,000 crore to set up its units in Kakatiya Mega Textiles Park at Warangal in Telangana.

The announcement came after a series of meetings with the Telangana Industries Minister KTR and a team from the Industries Department.

The Kitex management team flew in from Kerala to Hyderabad recently on a chartered flight arranged by the Telangana Government for a series of pre-scheduled meetings with the minister and his team. The minister gave an overview of the state government’s progressive investment policies and various resources for the textiles industry.

He explained the TSIPASS Single Window clearance system and the other advantages. He also stated that our state’s cotton is one of the finest in the world. The delegation from Kitex presented the group’s current activities and their future expansion plans.

After the initial meetings, the Kitex team flew to Kakatiya Mega Textile Park in a helicopter and inspected the premises. It was impressed with the Kakatiya Mega Textile Park infrastructure and flew back to Hyderabad.

Later, Sabu Jacob announced that his group has agreed upon a phase I investment of ₹1,000 crore within two years in the ‘Textile Apparel’ project in the Kakatiya Mega Textile Park in Warangal. This investment will generate employment of 4,000 jobs in the state of Telangana, he said.

Earlier, Kerala’s claims of an investor-friendly state seemed to have been handed down comeuppance with its largest private sector employer-turned-rebel entrepreneur flying out of the state with a dream ₹3,500-crore project to the waiting hands of an ‘industry-friendly Telangana.

Telangana Government was only to prompt to give a red-carpet welcome to Sabu Jacob days after he announced his intention to withdraw from the massive project he had announced for his home state.

Aggrieved by the ‘humiliating experience’ meted out to him by the Kerala government agencies conducting a series of inspections, the Kitex Group had announced his decision last week to back out from the proposed investments in Kerala.

The company had announced these investments in the Global Investor Meet in 2020 that involved setting up an apparel park and three industrial parks in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Palakkad by 2025, promising to generate more than 25,000 job opportunities in the state.

“I never wanted to leave Kerala. But how long can one bear with abuses and torture? The biggest thing one needs is peace of mind, and I have only lost it in Kerala. I am not leaving my home state, in fact, it is kicking me out,” an emotional Jacob told reporters before boarding the flight in Kochi for Hyderabad.

He had tried his best to stay in but was forced to make the tough decision as the harassment never abated. “Unable to withstand this, many entrepreneurs have ended lives. Many were driven out and I am the latest on the list. It is time Kerala changed to being industry-friendly.”

HBL