Coimbatore District is a vibrant business hub with a strong manufacturing base. The business tradition of Coimbatore has evolved over a period of last two hundred years. This development owes itself to the remarkable spirit of entreprenuership and enterprise which took roots in this district. It is a fascinating story as to how entrepreneurship can transform a region, and how such spirit of entrepreneurship is generated or re-generates itself. It is necessary to understand the evolution of the spirit of enterprise in this region which was the main trigger for its growth.

The most fundamental reason for the growth of Coimbatore as a manufacturing centre was the community- triggered contagion competitive spirit in Coimbatore . The high-quality educational institutions which the prosperity in the industry helped to set up, further expedited this process.

If we have to catch the sequence and chronology of this story of growth, it has most to do with the fact that the soil in Coimbatore was not very friendly to food production. It was more suited to cotton cultivation. At that time, under the British rule, the country had got into annual cotton cultivation, as a commercial activity. Hence farmers in Coimbatore began to grow cotton. This led to the setting up of the first cotton yarn spinning mill, nearly 200 years back. And due to availability of cotton in this area, more and more cotton spinning mills came up over the period of time. The machinery for these mills were imported or some of them were bought from manufacturers in Bombay region, which was the then textile hub. Gradually Coimbatore became a textile centre. It is even known as Manchester of the south.

Once the spirit of entrepreneurship entered the living traditions of the people, then it was only a matter of expansion and diversification into related and even different areas of economic activities. Coimbatore envisioned to build a strong Foundry base for manufacture of agriculture, industrial and domestic pumps in India . So, the spares for replacement in these machines were able to be produced in Coimbatore . Later, full-fledged machineries were manufactured. Textile industry began to get backward-integrated, in the capital goods-front, by evolution of a strong textile-machinery manufacturing base.

Simultaneously, the cotton spinning industry began to get forward-integrated by evolution of weaving capability, by hand loom or power loom, in the adjoining areas including Somanur, Palladam Thiruchengode, Pallipalyam, Karur etc. The evolution of the globally competitive Hosiery industry in Tiruppur was also due to the strong cotton yarn- manufacturing base in Coimbatore.

There was an evolution of textile machinery manufacturing sector due to the pre-existing engineering capability in the Foundry sector. The machinery manufacturing activity was a forward-integration of the foundry capability. This led to manufacture of a host of innovative machineries like Wet grinders, Lathes, machines for drilling, welding etc. This also led to the growth of Gear technology and manufacture of gear- based machineries. The Foundry and Machining capabilities were leveraged for supplying components to automobile manufacturers as a diversification and Coimbatore became a strong base for supply of auto- components for the whole of India.

Due to sustained and the locally contagion competitive creation of wealth over the period of last 40 years, a number of ancillary and resultant businesses also evolved. With the highly skilled traditional gold-smiths being available at hand, a strong jewellery manufacturing base evolved to cater to the large purchasing power and habit of buying jewellery in this region. Jewellry manufacture was also fuelled by the newly enriched Keralites through gulf employment in the last 30 years. The Keralites preferred to shop in Coimbatore for jewellery and other consumer items. This locational advantage was fully leveraged by the traders in Coimbatore.

A strong furniture manufacturing base also evolved in the last 25 years as a diversification of the Engineering capabilities.

Apart from the Manufacturing and trading base, Coimbatore has also become a base for the services with highly potential IT sector (Annual business value Rs60 crores),Health services i.e. hospitals (Rs 400 crores) and Education services i.e professional, arts and science colleges etc. (Rs 800 crores). The growth of these different services sector components is also the spin-off effect of the growth of the industrial sector in the first place, and the development of Coimbatore as the centre for the small towns and the large rural areas around.

A break-down of the autonomy of the annual business turnover of Coimbatore in different segments of industry is as under (Year 2004):

Textiles:

1. Cotton Yarn spinning industry : ( Rs.12,000 crores)
   


2. Weaving industry (Rs.4,000 crores of value addition)
   


3. Hosiery industry (Rs.6,000 crores)
   


4. Textile Machinery Manufacturing industry (Rs.2,000 crores)
   

Engineering:

1. Pump industry - Agricultural, industrial and domestic(Rs.2,500 crores)
   


2. Non-textile machinery manufacturing industry (Rs.1,900 crores)
   


3. Auto components manufacturing industry (Rs.2,200 crores)
   


4. Foundry industry (Rs 700 crores)
   


5. Furniture manufacture (Rs 250 crores)
   


6. Gear Industry (Rs.300 crores)
   

Others:

1. Jewellery manufacturing (Rs 1200 crores)

In total, the manufacturing value, created and added in the Coimbatore district excluding Tirupur will be around Rs. 30,000 crores a year. The larger sectors like Spinning sector accounting for nearly 30% of the country's total spindlage, Pumps accounting for 40% of the total production in the country and automobile components accounting for nearly 20% of the country's total business.