Printing A Success Story

PRINTING A SUCCESS STORY

PRINTOGRAPH INDUSTRIES LIMITED

"You can't do carpentry, if you only have a saw, or only a hammer, or you never heard of a pair of pliers. It's when you put all those tools into one kit that you invent."

-- Peter Drucker

Forty years of self-reliance, of import-substitution programmes and conscious policies for the development of industrial activity in this country have had some creditable results. India can produce virtually everything from safety pins to steam engines, in the private or in the public sector, in large or small sized enterprises with degrees of efficiency arid arguable quality of product.

India produced goods that could even be exported. But one industry that never blossomed even under the era of protection was the printing machine industry. For some reason this segment remained outside the realm of the industrial imagination almost till 1970s, a fact that might seem surprising considering the number of users in India. The principal reason was that the manufacture of printing machines was a highly complex industrial activity, comparable to manufacture of aircraft. Making a printing machine involves management of thousands of components and a variety of engineering skills including metal working, electronics and printing technology. It also calls for a high level of management skills to organize and practice such a complex operation. This was also the reason for the number o printing machine manufacturers dwindling in the Western world. One type of manufacturing actitivity i.e. sheetfed offset manufacturing became extinct in USA, the country which invented this machine. Other countries especially UK, France, Italy were gradually opting out of this type of manufacturing activity.

Satisfactory running of such an organisation also needed good quality assurance base, strong vendor base, a good R&D department and modern materials management systems. Apart from the complexity of such organisations the low business volumes were not attractive enough to raise and sustain such a complex task.

Slow changes were taking place. In the latter half of 1960s, machinery imports became noticeable from East Germany in the former Soviet bloc. Imports from the West were ruled out on account of high prices and exchange restrictions. Imports from East Germany, a rupee payment area, were relatively cheaper, in contrast, but what prompted some newspaper and magazine companies to put their money on such machinery was incipient competition within the print media.

The impact of imports from East Germany, on Indian initiative was certainly not positive. There was little incentive for entrepreneurs to undertake the rather onerous task of investments in an industry where sales in volume terms are not large, and anyway who could compete with German technology, even if it came from the other side of the Berlin Wall? Indian companies became indenting agents for East German machinery rather than attempting a shot at manufacturing the capital goods themselves. Not many had the foresight to see that the domestic print media was going to enter I period of noticeable modernisation. Very few realised that, given India's long tradition of the printed word and the plethora of magazines that existed across the country there was a hidden export potential waiting to be tapped; the printing machinery sector was waiting to be born.

One company that filled this vacuum was Printograph Industries Limited, (henceforward called PIL), a company that is a virtual monopolist in the supply of sophisticated newspaper rotaries and offset machines to the Indian print media. The story that follows goes beyond a chronicle of this evolution; it tells of an impatience to grab new markets, a penchant for constant innovation and the recognition that only the global market can satisfy its innovative urges.

From Trader to Manufacturer

PIL has been through a number of avatars. It started way back in 194 when the late Keshav Patel began his career as a trader in the printing industry. 'From trader to importer was a small step; joined by his son Bansi, the duo began importing machinery' for an industry in which obsolescence was a word yet to be learned. Business however picked up in the late 60s when it became popular for the printing industry to turn from letter press to offset typesetting; machines from East Germany were relatively cheap, payments could be made in rupees and there were indenting agents who could get the machines for the interested party. Bansi Patel had to shoulder the responsibilities at an early age of twenty' when his father Shri Keshav Patel died in the year 1952. Bansi Patel took up the marketing of printing machines. With the assistance of the then European manager and other competent sales and service people he actively' engaged himself in selling newspaper rotary machines produced by M/s. Plamag Plauen (GDR) and sold almost 150 printing units to all leading newspaper organisations in India within a short span of ten years.

In 1971, PIL decided that the time was ripe to launch into manufacturing activity. Under the terms of the agreement that the Patels entered into with their East German principal, VEB Polygraph agreed to provide technical help to manufacture small letter press machines and web offset machines for printing of text books and magazines for the Indian market.

The company started manufacturing at Kolhapur. Indenting still continued with Polygraph supplying sophisticated high speed web offset machines (WOMs) and automative letter presses. But what mattered was the transformation of the company from a pure trader to a trader cum manufacturer and more importantly, into an exporter.

Exporter too...

Under the terms of its collaboration with Polygraph, PIL could export its manufactures to the USSR and other East European countries. The company's long association with this area helped its turnover; volumes were large; the Russian sales accounted for more than 60 per cent of its total turnover and the market was growing. And why not? The printing and publishing industry in the Soviet bloc may have been controlled by the state but it was huge by international standards. And even if the quality of the publishing never reached the levels obtaining in the West, there were few to complain; books were inexpensive, Russian printing houses published in every major language of the world; for the printed word was also propaganda.

PIL prospered through the two decades 1970s and 1980s with subtle transformations in