Relax Weathered The Covid-19 Crisis Better Than Its Peers

Utility footwear giant Relaxo’s sensibly priced, customer-relevant footwear flew off the shelves during the pandemic, helping the company weather the Covid-19 crisis better than its peers

- Salil Panchal

Ramesh Kumar Dua & Mukand Lal Dua

Managing director; Whole-time director

Age: 65, 71

Rank in the Rich List

Net Worth: $1.33 billion

The Big Challenges Faced in the Last Year: Sluggish economic growth, labor management, rapidly changing customer preferences and early impact of the pandemic

The Way Forward: With demand for utility footwear rising, Relaxo plans to achieve a daily production target of 10 lakh pairs by March 2021; regular planned Capex of ₹100 crore as the new plant is set to come up next year

In mid-April, when the country was in phase 1 of a complete lockdown, wholesalers in parts of rural Rajasthan and Haryana had been approaching large distributors to pick up essential goods, which included dairy products, groceries, medical equipment, and medicines. “In the tempos where wholesalers were stocking goods for sale, they also bought three to five cartons of Relaxo slippers, to be sold through their own channels,” says Ramesh Kumar Dua, managing director of Relaxo Footwears, India’s largest footwear maker.

Dua narrates this incident, which a distributor told him, while speaking to Forbes India from his corporate headquarters in New Delhi. It indicates the need for affordable footwear—so much so that it is considered essential—for the public at a time when most services and factories were shut due to the pandemic. Relaxo exclusive stores and factories did not open until mid-May.