India is now the second largest textile exporter in the world. While still far behind China, whose exports are seven times higher, it has overtaken Italy and Germany.

Manjunath Kiran/AFP

Indian textile exports reached 40.2 billion dollars last year, or 5.2% of total textile exports, estimated at 772 billion dollars.

The country seems to have benefited greatly from the rise of its apparel business, which now represents 43% of its textile industry. In terms of apparel, India also rose in the rankings from eighth to sixth in 2013.

The 23% growth of Indian textile exports exceeds that of China (11.4%) and Bangladesh (15.4%). "Despite having slow recovery in US and EU, our biggest traditional markets as well as the prevailing global slowdown coupled with sustained cost of inflationary inputs, we made the best possible efforts to reach here,” said a pleased Virender Uppal, chairman of the Apparel Export Promotion Council, to the Indian press.

Like China, India is not only a large producer of textile and fashion products. It’s also a turning out to be a large consumer. Estimated at 58 billion dollars per year, the domestic textile and apparel market is expected to reach 141 billion dollars by 2021.