ABSTRACT The Indian textile industry has significant negative impacts on the environment. This industry needs to adopt a circular economy approach to become more sustainable; however, progress on this has been limited. In this study, we report on the barriers to adoption of Circular Economy Business Models (CEBMs) in the Indian textile industry. We used qualitative research techniques using data from interviews collected in two stages. In the first stage we identified 22 major barriers; in the second stage, we explored the relationships between them. We used T2NN‐DEMATEL supplemented by K ‐means cluster analysis to analyze our data. Our findings indicate that the lack of textile industry‐specific training programs is the most significant barrier to CEBM adoption in India. We offer several recommendations to address the major barriers. Scholarship pertaining to sustainability in the textile industry in India and other developing countries is scarce; our study provides a significant addition.
Chandra et al. (2026) studied this question.