In four months alone: 10 million textbooks

Abhimaani Group has a dual word mantra: time & quality – dead serious about deadlines and producing better than the best quality. Their basic purpose is to transform images into reality and give it a form on paper. One of the leading book printers in India, Abhimaani produces 10 million textbooks in four months time during their peak season. Here’s more on this leading book printer. Bengaluru-based Abhimaani Group offers a one-stop solution for an entire range of printing jobs. Well equipped with a vast and modern infrastructure with the latest state-of-the-art facilities, they have a strong technical and innovative expertise with round-the-clock accessibility and service. Little wonder then that they have the capacity to produce 10 million textbooks in four months. “Most of the time, we use only 50 percent of our regular capacity but at the time of textbook season, we use 90 percent of our capacity for six months. We produce 10 million textbooks in 4 months of time,” shared Venkatesh Srinivas, director – production controller & head of marketing, Abhimaani Group.

And Venkatesh is upbeat about the textbook market segment. “We have not faced shrinking print runs in textbooks. Rather we are seeing a hike in textbooks, thanks for the education system where every year the content of the books get changed in local as well as in exports. But, other books like journals, novels and other commercial books are really shrinking in quantity,” he added.

State-of-the-art technology…

T Venkkatesh, managing director with his son Venkatesh Srinivas, executive director, Abhimaani Group.Abhimaani believes in constantly investing on technology. That is the only way to beat the competition in today’s highly competitive scenario. To precisely fulfil this objective, they have set up a Printing Division that has one prepress and two printing units; one in Rajajinagar and another in Peenya Industrial Estate.

“We cover virtually every commercial print requirement, be it on paper or board. And this could range from book printing, calendars, diaries, corporate brochures and posters to folders, leaflets and magazines. Our range of services include designing, typesetting, high-quality scanning, image manipulation, sheet fed offset printing, heatset and coldset web offset printing, automated binding, finishing and even distribution,” shared Venkatesh. “We have huge capacity in size of machines and productivity. We have machines from small size to large size to produce the short run to mass production. Our strength is web offset printing and post press. We have eight web offset machine with different cutoffs which can produce three million signatures per day and binding capacity of 4,00,000 books per day,” he shared.

To achieve outstanding reproduction of pictures, graphics and text, they employ cutting-edge technology using CtP (Computer to Plate) and imagesetting equipment. Their comprehensive binding and finishing units include a wide range of high-tech, automated equipment for book and magazine production. They have the capacity of cutting, folding, collating and sewing through a variety of machines at its disposal.

What’s more, Abhimaani has the latest technology in finishing equipment for lamination, poly-wrapping and shrink-wrapping. Providing the finishing touches is as important as the product itself. And Abhimaani prides itself on being a complete packaging solutions provider. This could range from glassy/matte lamination, window lamination, varnishing and spot varnishing to punching, die cutting and automated pasting.

On asking about the upgradations they would like to see in coming times, Venkatesh replied, “Of course, digital printing – short run jobs with inline finishing will be the best opportunity and best upgradations.”

Quality parameters…

Since quality is of prime importance at Abhimaani, they have deployed quality checks at all stages. “We are ISO 9001 and 2008 certified and we adhere and follow the quality guidelines from the system. We also have every stage QC controller from planning to despatch. We have separate trained staff for the QC and planning,” told Venkatesh.

On exports…

Abhimaani exports to countries like West Africa, the Middle East and Australia. “We export printed text books and stationery through the Ministry of Education that is aided by the World Bank. Infact, our book printing industry is at par with foreign counterparts at all levels with quality, timely delivery. Moreover, we are very economical as compared to foreign counterparts, specially China. We Indians have more exports to Africa when compared to any other foreign company,” he shared.

“We export 24 percent of our turnover and this year we are planning two folds of it. We are mainly exporting text books, exercise books, sketch books and note books to countries like Ghana, Ethiopia and Malawi,” told Venkatesh.

On asking about the general challenges being faced for exports, he replied, “The biggest challenge is price and meeting the deadline. But, our built-in capacity is helping us in the competition to beat price and meeting deadlines.” We already posses some digital machines and also to meet clients demand we are also looking at investing in high end digital in line finishing machines, which will help us to meet any demand of the clients with the shortest time to meet the deadline.

The publishing division

Abhimaani has two widely accepted publications -If Ee Sanje is a Kannada evening daily newspaper, Aragini is a Kannada film tabloid. Abhimaani began publishing Ee Sanje way back in 1992. Today, after more than 16 years, it is one of the largest circulated Kannada evening dailies in the whole of Karnataka state. With Aragini, Abhimaani has become the first publishing house in the state to start a racy Kannada film tabloid. With an enviable readership of 4,00,000 and counting, the tabloid dedicated to the south Indian film industry is evolving into a bigger entity.

On a concluding note…

“In my opinion, conventional print has demand in mass production where as small run has demand with variable data digital and Abhimaani is already geared up in this direction,” concluded Venkatesh.

–Varsha Verma