Leather News India is the official monthly magazine of the Council for Leather Exports (CLE), India's apex export promotion body for the leather and footwear sector. Published from Chennai, the magazine serves as the institutional voice of the Indian leather trade, carrying news of industry developments, export trends, policy updates and council activities to exporters, manufacturers and stakeholders across the country.
Overview
Leather News India is a monthly trade publication brought out by the Council for Leather Exports and sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. Unlike commercial trade magazines that sell on newsstands, it functions primarily as a membership organ: every member of the CLE receives a free copy of the magazine as part of their membership benefits, alongside regular updates on drawback rates, market information, trends, policies and procedures. This direct distribution model makes it one of the most consistently read publications within India's leather exporting community. The magazine is priced at Rs. 100 per issue on its cover, and recent issues carry volume-and-issue numbering that reflects a long and continuous publication record — the May 2024 issue, for example, was Volume 15, Issue 05, indicating the current volume sequence began in the late 2000s.
The Council for Leather Exports
To understand the magazine, one must understand its publisher. The Council for Leather Exports is an autonomous, non-profit export promotion organisation sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. It is the apex body for the promotion of Indian leather, leather products, footwear and related industries in overseas markets. The council's membership comprises manufacturer-exporters, merchant-exporters and other stakeholders across the value chain — tanneries, footwear units, footwear component makers, saddlery manufacturers, leather goods producers and garment exporters. The council operates from its headquarters at 1, Sivaganga Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai, with regional offices serving the industry's main clusters: the Central region operating from the KLC Complex at Banthar, Unnao near Kanpur; the Eastern region from Shakespeare Sarani, Kolkata; the Northern region from Okhla, New Delhi; and the Western region from Andheri (East), Mumbai. These regional offices also participate in producing the magazine's content, reflecting developments in their respective clusters.
Publication Format and Frequency
Leather News India is published monthly and structured as a substantial trade journal rather than a slim newsletter. Each issue carries the council's masthead, volume and issue numbers, the month of publication and the cover price. The magazine is brought out jointly from the council's central office in Chennai, with the Central Region office at Banthar, Unnao credited as a co-bringing-out office. Issues are archived by the council and made available as PDF downloads through the official website, leatherindia.org, so that members and researchers can consult back issues. The publication's longevity — reaching its fifteenth volume by 2024 in the current numbering sequence — testifies to the council's sustained commitment to keeping its membership informed through a dedicated print channel, even as digital communication has grown around it.
Content and Coverage
The editorial content of Leather News India is firmly anchored in the concerns of the export community. Typical issues carry reports on the activities and meetings of the council's chairman and office-bearers, coverage of trade promotion events, overseas exhibitions, buyer-seller meets and reverse buyer-seller meets organised by the council, and updates on export promotion schemes administered or facilitated by the council. The magazine tracks policy developments affecting the sector — from duty drawback rates and incentive schemes to the Integrated Development of Leather Sector (IDLS) scheme, for which CLE acts as the facilitating agency. It also reports on market intelligence: trends in global demand, developments in key destination markets, and analysis of export performance. Because it is sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the magazine carries an official imprimatur, and its reports on government policy and bilateral trade developments are read as authoritative within the industry.
Editorial Leadership and Structure
The magazine is edited by R. Selvam, who is credited as Editor in the publication's masthead. He is supported by a team of associate editors drawn from the council's regional offices — E.L. Samson in Chennai, Pallavi Dubey in Kanpur, Debasis De in Kolkata, Atul Kumar Mishra in New Delhi and Santosh Pandey in Mumbai — giving the editorial operation a genuinely pan-Indian footprint that mirrors the geographic spread of the industry's clusters. An Editorial Advisory Board provides oversight, comprising the council's Chairman, Vice Chairman and regional chairmen — in the May 2024 masthead these were Rajendra Kumar Jalan as Chairman, Ramesh Juneja as Vice Chairman, with Asad Kamal Iraqi, Ramesh Juneja, Puran Dawar, M. Abdul Wahab and Vikas Mahtani serving as regional chairmen for the Central, East, North, South and West regions respectively. The magazine is formally published by R. Selvam, completing the circle of institutional accountability.
Readership and Distribution
Leather News India's circulation is effectively coextensive with the council's membership. The council's membership spans thousands of exporters of all sizes, from large footwear manufacturers to small and medium tanneries and goods producers, organised in categories from associate members to ordinary members graded by export turnover. A free copy of the monthly magazine is listed among the general benefits of membership, which means the magazine lands each month on the desks of the industry's decision-makers — the very people who attend council meetings, participate in its overseas fairs and shape its policy positions. Beyond members, copies reach government officials in the commerce ministry, industry associations, and participants in the council's events, giving the magazine influence disproportionate to its cover price.
Role in Export Promotion
India's leather and footwear exports were worth USD 4.89 billion in the fiscal year before 2026-27, with the council's chairman Ramesh Kumar Juneja projecting growth of over 12 per cent to USD 5.5 billion in 2026-27, driven by trade agreements such as the India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement that came into force on July 15, 2026, and the anticipated India-EU trade pact. Within this promotional architecture, Leather News India performs a critical internal-communications function: it tells the industry what the council is doing on its behalf — the 17 overseas export promotion events organised across ten countries in a single recent stretch, the workshops helping MSME exporters understand free trade agreements, the campaigns positioning India as a reliable supplier of quality leather goods. By documenting these activities month after month, the magazine builds institutional memory and member confidence in the council's work.
The Industry It Covers
The Indian leather sector is among the country's most labour-intensive export industries, employing around 4.42 million people, many of them women and workers from disadvantaged communities. India is among the world's largest producers of leather and leather products, with major production clusters in Tamil Nadu (Chennai, Ranipet, Ambur, Vaniyambadi, Erode), Uttar Pradesh (Kanpur, Agra, Unnao, Noida), West Bengal (Kolkata) and Punjab (Jalandhar). The sector exports finished leather, footwear, leather garments, gloves, saddlery and harness, and leather goods and accessories, with the UK and the European Union together accounting for around 75 per cent of sectoral exports. The government's long-term ambition — a target of USD 50 billion in leather and footwear exports by 2030 cited in policy discussions — gives the sector a strategic importance that the magazine reflects in its coverage of policy and infrastructure developments, from integrated leather clusters to state-level industry policies such as Uttar Pradesh's drafting of a new leather and footwear policy aimed at doubling the size of that state's industry within five years.
Access and Availability
Leather News India is available through the Council for Leather Exports' official website, leatherindia.org, where PDF editions of recent issues can be downloaded. Council members receive the print edition free as a membership benefit, and the magazine's cover price is Rs. 100 per issue. Correspondence regarding the magazine is handled through the council's Chennai headquarters — phone +91-44-48684380 to 84, email cle@cleindia.com — with regional offices at Kanpur (cleknp@cleindia.com), Kolkata (cleer@cleindia.com), New Delhi (cledelhi@cleindia.com) and Mumbai (cleb@cleindia.com) also listed in the publication's contact credits. For exporters, researchers and students of India's leather economy, the magazine's back-issue archive offers a month-by-month documentary record of the industry's recent history.
Significance
Trade publications come and go, but Leather News India endures because it is institutional rather than commercial: it does not depend on advertising cycles or newsstand sales, but on the council's statutory mission to keep its members informed. In an era when much industry communication has migrated to email circulars and social media, the magazine's monthly cadence imposes a discipline of record-keeping — chairman's meetings minuted, export figures published, policy changes explained — that makes it a primary source for anyone studying the Indian leather industry. Its pages are where the sector talks to itself, and where the government, through the council, speaks directly to the exporters it serves.
