Gokaldas Exports: an 84% write-down, an owner-minded CEO, and a working revival

In 2007 Blackstone paid Rs 482.50 crore for 50.1% of Gokaldas Exports, once India's largest apparel exporter, at Rs 275 a share, a 20% premium, and added another 20% through an open offer. Over the next decade the company stagnated: its dollar revenue halved, the share price fell to double digits, and the top line sat at about Rs 1,000 crore a year while rivals scaled.

In early 2017 Mathew Cyriac, who had just quit as co-head of Blackstone's India private equity business, bought the firm's Gokaldas stake at Rs 42 a share through his vehicle Florintree Capital's SPV — an 84% write-down on Blackstone's original investment. He hired Sivaramakrishnan Ganapathi, a two-decade Aditya Birla veteran and former Idea Cellular COO, as managing director, and backed him with new capital: about Rs 125 crore of plans, including a Rs 70 crore qualified institutional placement taken by L&T Mutual Fund and HSF Mauritius.

The operating reset was about customers and efficiency rather than headline cost cuts: re-earning the trust of brands like Gap and Tommy Hilfiger with reliability and flexibility. Losses of Rs 46 crore in FY17 and Rs 28 crore in FY18 turned into a net profit of Rs 25.58 crore in FY19, with all four quarters in the black.

From a Rs 46 crore loss in FY17 to profit from FY19; by FY26 it books about Rs 1,000 crore in a single quarter, roughly what the top line did in a whole year.

Control by a financial investor had left the operator without a decisive owner; an owner-minded buyer restored one.

Fresh capital funded customer and efficiency work instead of being absorbed by distress.

The turnaround was led by a hired CEO with an owner's mandate, not by financial engineering alone.

The write-down reset expectations, letting the new team win back top clients on reliability rather than price.

Owners behave differently from agents. Gokaldas revived only when a buyer who thought like an owner hired a CEO and gave him an owner's mandate — capital and authority together.

The recovery held through trade turbulence. In the June 2025 quarter Gokaldas posted a 53% year-on-year rise in net profit to Rs 41 crore, with total income of Rs 977 crore and EBITDA margin up 336 basis points to 12.1%, and in the December quarter it booked income of Rs 1,003 crore despite a 50% US penalty tariff on Indian apparel. In February 2026 management guided to 12–15% revenue growth for FY27 and about 15% for FY28, with roughly Rs 175 crore of capex planned over two years.