The Surat textile market

Let's visit Surat, Gujarat: Asia's oldest textile market and a famous textile hub, with thousands of factories making cotton and synthetic cloth.

Raw cotton arrives through cotton mandīs from nearby states like Maharashtra and other parts of Gujarat.

It becomes finished cloth or clothes through many stages: weaving on power looms, dyeing in processing units, and so on.

Here's the amazing part: between stages, it moves through separate markets!

The same cotton is bought and sold several times on its way to becoming a saree.

Factories sell the finished goods in the wholesale market. Wholesalers then send them to small shops and big stores across India and abroad. That's how a shop in your town gets its sarees.

Wholesalers also find out how much retailers need. This helps factories keep the right stock, so supply to customers never stops. So wholesalers carry goods forwards and information backwards: what shops sell tells factories what to make.

Surat also has the world's largest diamond industry: about 1.5 million artisans cut and polish diamonds!

Why Surat? Trade has flourished there since the 16th century. Its spot on the west coast led to ports and roads that still matter today. And families of skilled artisans have lived there for centuries, passing their skills down the generations.