From Every Department of a Surat Textile Factory to a Print-Design Desk: How Pooja Avinash Patil Built a Career on Hands-On Experience and Self-Reliance

An internship paved the way for Pooja Patil to gain experience across every department of a textile factory in Surat. She learned how work happens on a factory floor, where real production timelines and deadlines matter. She worked as an intern at Savani Textile Industries in Sachin, Surat. She gained this broad experience by rotating through different departments of the same factory each week, giving her first-hand observation and practical learning. This experience eventually led her to Vishwas Creations for a print design role.

Pooja Patil is a B.Des. student from Parul University. Her journey is not a straight one. She was always drawn to the creative field, design, and related work. She initially pursued footwear design and secured admission before circumstances redirected her. She then took admission at Parul University, Vadodara, where she found subjects aligned with her interests. Even after getting admission, she did not settle; she continued working, practising, and building the skills that made her self-reliant.

This sits alongside other documented outcomes from the Faculty of Design at Parul University, including Simran Singh’s Pre-Placement Offer at Arvind, Sanskriti Singh’s self-directed design path, Prernakumari Patel’s Bloodline Pact collection, and Aditi Jagdish’s merchandising route to Pantaloons.

Pooja secured her internship through preparation and directness. When she applied and was invited to interview, the managers were keen to see her physical portfolio, the drawings, colour schemes, and garments she had made across her years at Parul Institute of Design. They also asked direct questions to understand her interests, experience, and design approach, beginning with whether she had ever worked in an office before.

With honesty, she answered the questions. Through her portfolio and straight, precise answers, she impressed the hiring team. The takeaway she draws is clear: honesty paired with a well-organised body of past work is the most reliable way to succeed in a design interview. She did not oversell herself. She showed what she had made and answered plainly, and that was enough.

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Pooja’s internship at Savani Textile Industries ran for three months, from January to March, in the industrial area of Sachin, Surat. The company rotated her through a different department every week, turning the internship into a complete education in textile manufacturing.

• Sampling. She started by creating test pieces of clothing to check how a design would look in reality, the first stage where a concept meets fabric.
• Quality inspection. She moved to the department that inspects the quality of threads and base cloth, learning the standards a garment must meet before it proceeds.
• Mass production. She worked on the demanding sewing floor, where tens of thousands of garments are produced on large machines, the hardest and most intense environment in the factory.
• Packing and dispatch. She was trained in correctly folding and packing garments into boxes for online orders, the final stage before a product reaches a customer.
• Fabric selection. She helped designers choose the right soft fabric for casual shirt designs, connecting the manufacturing floor back to design decisions.

Seeing the full chain, from the first sample to the last packed box, gave Pooja something most fashion graduates never get: a working understanding of how a garment is actually produced at scale. That knowledge makes a designer far more useful, because designs that ignore manufacturing reality do not survive a production floor.

The most difficult part of the factory was mass production. Where the sampling and materials departments moved in a steady rhythm, the production floor ran fast and hectic. The work demanded complete attention to hit the factory’s daily targets, and Pooja’s job was to keep the workflow smooth and error-free, because even a small mistake in sewing or cutting could ruin a large quantity of costly fabric. As one order finished, another large production task was already waiting, and the flow could not stop.

The production floor required constant coordination and demanded energy in a fast-moving environment. Working through it taught Pooja Patil how to make decisions under pressure. She also handled a practical matter with characteristic directness: when her training allowance was slightly delayed, she went to the main office, clarified the situation with the administrators, and had it resolved with a single payment without letting it interfere with her work. It is a small detail that says a lot about her willingness to advocate for herself and solve problems head-on.

Before leaving Parul Institute of Design, Pooja and her partner built their final graduation collection, Metanoia, which she describes as the most satisfying and proud phase of her college years. The concept was disciplined: rather than buying many types of cloth, they worked with a single fabric and used dyes to create many shades of it, then stitched the collection with care.

On presentation day, they showcased the collection on the main stage, and the work paid off in a sense of genuine accomplishment. A collection built from one fabric explored through colour is a strong demonstration of design discipline, achieving range and impact through restraint rather than variety, and it capped her four years with a piece she was proud of.

After completing her education and factory training, Pooja moved on from the Surat company and found a new role at Vishwas Creations, where she has recently started. The company welcomed her and offered an annual salary of nearly five lakhs, a solid start for a fresh graduate. Her role is designing fabric prints by creating the images and designs used for printing cloth.

The work is contemporary. Pooja uses advanced computer technology, including artificial intelligence tools, to help identify which shapes and patterns will appeal to the general public, pairing her design instinct with data-driven insight into buyer preferences. It is a modern application of the material and buyer knowledge she built on the factory floor, now applied at a design desk with current tools.

Pooja distilled her experience into a set of hard-earned rules for anyone entering the industry, and they centre on a single realisation: making garments is only a small fraction of running a fashion business.

• Visibility. Talent and drawing ability count for nothing if the work stays hidden in a corner. A designer has to present their work to the world and to their superiors, because silence keeps opportunity away. As she puts it, talent brings success only if you dare to share it.
• Understanding buyers. What she once treated as boring market-research homework turned out to be the top priority in a real office. A designer cannot simply draw whatever they imagine; they have to analyse what people actually buy, because a design the public does not want is meaningless, however beautiful it is.
• Communication. Isolation does not work in this business. Approaching the team, learning how others work, and voicing ideas openly is essential, and workplaces reward people who communicate well and engage openly.

Pooja’s advice to younger students comes with an honest admission: she did not take her first two years seriously enough, and she regrets it, believing her skills could have been sharper had she focused from the start. Her practical instruction follows from that: do not waste time, and photograph every drawing and finished garment as you make it, because when a job search begins, a student with no documented work has nothing to show. Building the portfolio habit early is non-negotiable.

Her five-year vision is refreshingly grounded. She is not chasing overnight wealth or fame. She wants to look in the mirror in five years and be genuinely content with what she has achieved, holding that inner peace is what makes real satisfaction possible. It is a mature ambition from a graduate who has already shown she can handle a factory floor, advocate for herself, and adapt to new tools.

For graduates like Pooja who value building their own way, Parul University’s mission extends beyond placement toward a business-ready mindset that lets students carve their own path, supported by PIERC, the Parul Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, which has backed 254 startups across sectors including consumer and lifestyle brands. Parul University holds NAAC A++ accreditation at a CGPA of 3.55, Category 1 status with Grant of Graded Autonomy, and ranks 6th in India for SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and 7th in India for SDG 4 (Quality Education) in the Times Higher Education Sustainability Impact Ratings 2026.