Based in Gandhi Nagar, Vijayawada, Nirmala Offset Printers and Traders was established in 1948. The business, started with letterpress printing work by Narayana Murthy, was called Nirmala Printers at the time. In 1985, Murthy’s son, PVG Bhaskar, joined the business and renamed it Nirmala Offset Printers and Traders. Today, Bhaskar runs the company with a staff strength of 30. PVG Bhaskar is also joined by his son, Harshit Bhaskar, who looks after the production part of the business.
Nirmala Offset is primarily a a multicolor printer of wedding cards, retail magazines, brochures, wallpapers and calendars. The company is well known for printing the yearly Telugu Panchangam calendar. “We are well known all over Andhra Pradesh for printing the Telugu Panchangam calendar. Besides this, we have our own wedding card manufacturing unit, which supplies to Andhra Pradesh, Telangana as well as Odisha,” says PVG Bhaskar.
PVG Bhaskar’s card manufacturing firm, Nimala Cards and Stationery, manufactures cards under the ‘Raja’ brand name. Talking about the printing market in Vijayawada, he tells us that although there is demand for printing jobs, the future lies is packaging.
“We want to diversify to packaging for which we plan to buy some good machines soon. There is immense scope for packaging jobs in Vijayawada while the players in this space are just a handful. So, I believe we can create good demand in packaging if we enter this vertical. In Andhra, verticals like agricultural products and pharma are huge. However, there is a lack of infrastructure in the packaging space and that’s what we want to tap. If we have to survive in this highly competitive market, packaging is the next thing to do,” shares PVG Bhaskar.
Although PVG Bhaskar has not finalized on the brands of the equipment in which he wants to invest, he says there are a few names in his mind, which he refused to disclose. Nevertheless, he wants to enter the packaging space in full strength by January 2020. In the press segment, Nirmala Offset has a Mitsubishi Daiya 2F 4-color press, which is a used machine and also a used Mitsubishi single-color press. In addition, the unit has two die-punching and two foiling machines – both from Heidelberg. There is also an Indian-made UV coating machine and a Sanyo folding machine for postpress and binding work.
