During the Indian wedding seasons, the first thing that comes to our minds is the wedding invitations. While wedding invitations were originally meant to be the source of information, today, it has changed to a piece of art. A lot of creativity and efforts are invested to get the perfect wedding invitations. New Delhi-based Parampara Printers is one such printer who carves these exquisite pieces of art. In a tête-à-tête with Varsha Verma, Lokesh Mahajan and Karan Bhatia - the partners of this venture, share the intricacies involved in this business.

Founded six years back, Parampara Printers has established itself as one of the leading wedding card producers in India. They offer a range of wedding cards with boxes (for sweets), starting from Rs 100 to Rs 1500 each. Their designs are so captivating that they get orders not only from Delhi but also all over India as well as abroad. But their bestseller is the Rs 125 range card.

As Karan Bhatia puts it, “The wedding invitation market in India has picked up in the last three to four years. The concept of readymade cards has given way to customised cards.” “Earlier, people were willing to spend only up to Rs 50-60 on a wedding card but now a Rs 300-400 card has become a normal thing. Thus, an average family is ready to spend Rs 75,000-1,00,000 on the cards while the upper middle class segment is ready to spend Rs 1,00,000 – 2,50,000 on the wedding cards alone,” he added.

Parampara Printers started with a modest set-up and outsourced the manufacturing. Today, their production facility boasts of a LaserPro for laser die-cutting, screenprinting, foil printing, die-cutting, pasting machines, case-making machines, UV, etc. “But, for folding boxes, we have specialised labour performing the job manually,” told Karan. “Since each of our card goes through a couple of printing processes to get the unique look, we decide the colours on the basis of desired look and effect of the actual printed product,” added Lokesh Mahajan.

“It is estimated that Delhi alone has a business potential for Rs 250 crore for wedding cards. There are around eight-ten pecialised wedding card manufacturers in Delhi but since we maintain our quality and creativity at reasonable rates, we see an increase in business every year. We do not need publicity, as our word-of-mouth publicity is enough to give us new clients. We have serviced around 3,000 families in Delhi alone and have become their card manufacturers for any special occasion or wedding in their families,” told Lokesh.

The team at Parampara Printers is perfect…while Karan Bhatia takes care of the customer dealings, Lokesh Mahajan takes care of the production and his wife Neema Mahajan uses her designing skills to create the masterpieces, one after the other. Karan brings with him a good eighteen years of experience in printing while Lokesh has two years of experience in stationery printing. “There was no creativity in the stationery field and hence the job satisfaction was less but in the wedding card industry, there is ample scope for creativity. Besides, people now have money and are ready to make use of it as well,” told Lokesh.

What’s more interesting that Parampara Printers is cordially invited to all the weddings for which they have created the wedding cards, such is the customer-client relationship. Weddings are an occasion to bond and Parampara Printers have lived up to it…bonding with the client for lifetime!