Cotton is a natural fibre crop. The cotton textile industry is the industry which involves in making clothes out of the fibre. It is one of the oldest industries of the world. India has a glorious history of producing excellent quality cotton textiles. The Muslins of Dhaka, Chintzes of Masulipatnam.

Calicos of Calicut and gold-wrought cotton of Burhanpur, Vadodara and Surat had world-famous quality and design. The traditional Indian cotton textile industry, however, could not compete with the Western textile mills, due to the high cost of the hand woven textile. The process involved, moreover, was time-consuming.

The first successful mechanised textile mill in India was established in Mumbai in 1854. The factors that led to the success were the warm and moist climate, the presence of a nearby port for importing machinery, the availability of raw material and skilled labour. Humidity was the main reason why the industry was initially limited to Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Today the industry has spread to various other parts of the country, due to the artificial production of humidity. The important cotton textile centres are in Coimbatore, Kanpur, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ludhiana, Puducherry, and Panipat.