new delhi diversified group raymond which has its majority business interests in textile and apparel sectors is cautiously optimistic about recovery amid the covid19 pandemic its chairman and managing director gautam hari singhania has said looking at the 202021 fiscal as a total washout the group expects this fiscal to end on a flat note in terms of growth prospects with businesses being hit in the first six months of the current fiscal by the pandemicrelated disruptions on being asked about growth expectations singhania told the group has passed through a very tough phase for the last six months when everything was closed due to the pandemic so there would be no growth this fiscal advt on being asked about business recovery going ahead singhania said i think there would be cautiously optimistic recovery he however said that the group has already achieved precovid19 sales numbers in some of the business segments and even more in some other verticals though it expects a longer time for the recovery of its textile and apparel business we have a mix bag sector to sector and i think the textile and apparel sector would take a little longer to recover because the wholesale markets were closed for a long time it took a little longer but i think that we are in the right direction the good thing is that every week or two weeks we are seeing little more sales he said people slowly slowly are back to buying and i am confident that the sales will come back he added the raymond group operates in segments such as fmcg engineering and prophylactics besides in the textile and apparel sectors the group had a revenue of rs 318639 crore for the financial year 201920 it reported a revenue of rs 2403 crore in the apriljune quarter of 2020 and rs 254 crore in the julyseptember quarter of 2020 this year is a total washout so i dont think we will meet 2020 levels but moving forward a lot of companies have reshaped themselves they have set new benchmarks and moving forward i think there is a lot of opportunities for the companies that survived this pandemic they will come out much stronger he said advt the company is also confident to get a pie into the recent trend of change in attire from formal dressing to causal as working from home is catching up under the new normals post pandemic according to singhania raymonds portfolio has changed dramatically with strong brands such as colorplus and parx from 10 years ago when it only made worsted fabrics for suiting in fact even raymonds portfolio itself has changed a lot with a lot of casual wear so the whole dynamics is changed and our product offering also has changed he said adding even there is a move from formal to casual we still got a share of the pie besides the company which has also manufacturing operation in ethiopia is cautiously optimistic about it