It all started in the year 1950, just 3 years after India gained Independence, when Mr. R.L Sachdeva migrated to Ludhiana, India. Just like the Indian state, everything was also new, the people, the places, and the opportunities. Mr. R.L Sachdeva started off as a seller of hand dyed fabrics to household men and women in the city (since, India barely had any sort of development, there were no retail companies, brands or any sort of enterprise providing or catering to any, including basic human needs of the population).
After a few years he planned to move to Delhi with his family which also had his youngest son – Tajinder Sachdeva who went ahead and created the company that people know today as Mercury Fabrics Pvt. Ltd.
As Mr. Sachdeva moved to Delhi in the year 1962, so did his career, he continued to sell hand dyed fabrics in Delhi while the young Tajinder Sachdeva, 3 years of age was growing up. The 70’s brought changes in the political landscape of the country, which directly affected the business ecosystem. This was the time when India started witnessing a growth in business opportunities and when Mr. Sachdeva in the late 70’s along with his sons entered into trading of all kinds of fabric for garment manufacturing and exporting companies by developing business relationships with manufacturers of greige fabrics and processers.
As time passed, by the year 1989, the sons continued to work in the same field and traded in fabrics which were mostly manufactured by fabric processing and printing mills in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. They diversified their product basket by offering printed fabrics to their clients. The new millennium brought a shift in their strategy, with the world more integrated and informed; the expectations of buyers preceded this change. With western buyers looking at more specialized products the next generation of the family decided to specialise in knitted fabrics.
It was between 1999 and the early 2000’s that the next generation of the family, Mr. Tajinder Sachdeva’s elder son Rahul entered the family business. The new millennium saw technology transforming the private business ecosystem in India, which furthered business innovation.
By 2003, Mercury Fabrics Private Limited was incorporated and the first greige fabric was produced by its own in-house knitting machinery. At that time, only the greige fabric was being produced by Mercury and it was being processed/dyed or printed by other companies before it was sold to the final buyer.
In the year 2006, Mr. Tajinder Sachdeva decided to expand the business exponentially and he went forward to invest in his own plant that would be capable of churning out 5 tons of finished fabric per day. It was during that time that the world and particularly America started seeing a sudden drop in economic productivity which in turn saw a drop in consumer demand. While the manufacturing plant was being incorporated the global economic scenario worsened and directly affected manufacturers in countries that relied on exports. Mr. Tajinder Sachdeva’s dream of setting up a plant of that size seemed to be on a shaky road. It was even more of a challenge since Mr. Sachdeva didn’t have any experience of setting up such a unit before. He never lost hope. He along with his elder son Rahul did whatever they could to succeed in such a situation, and they eventually did. Ever since then, the company has seen phenomenal growth year on year.
By 2015, M ercury also had an operationalized printing plant with state of the art machinery sourced from key fabric machine manufacturers from around the globe and also installed some machines which were the first ever machines to be installed in the country. In 2008, the company had annual revenue of 4 million USD which increased to $40 million USD by FY2018-2019. An increase of 10 folds in almost 10 years.