While some observers of the Indian print, packaging and publishing industry may think that the Indian print industry continues to grow and that packaging is somewhat immune to the current economic slowdown, we know differently. We are aware of the disorganized growth in the print industry that has created unproductive capacities and hypercompetition.
Nevertheless, positive stories are coming from the organized players — those who have the resources to last out the downturn that began in the 2007-08 financial year and have continued to expand and innovate. The somewhat flat and slightly declining economy of the last six years has made innovation and efficiency even more compelling. The only way to grow has been to add value to customers by innovation and improved quality processes and standards that increase productivity and decrease waste. This is the only way for organized players to deal with the hypercompetition caused by the growth of disorganized capacities.
Our group publishes two trade monthlies Indian Printer and Publisher and Packaging South Asia. It also owns an industry supported company, IppStar — Services, Training and Research Private Limited. IppStar was started in 2001 and it has undertaken two industry-wide research surveys across the country apart from several specific research and consulting projects for both Indian and international companies. For standardization and colour management, IppStar held several open house, roundtable and conference discussions. Additionally, IppStar conducted a 5-day Color Management Course in Delhi and Chennai in 2005, and then the Monsoon Summit conferences in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai in 2009, where an international cast of experts discussed the emerging ISO 12647 process color printing standards. However, the colour standardization process amongst the printing, publishing and packaging companies in India has been extremely slow for a variety of reasons including awareness, shortage of local expertise and cost.
In mid-2013, IppStar tied up with IDEAlliance in the United States and started establishing IDEAlliance India.
IDEAlliance has a strong and transparent web-based back- end that lists its members worldwide and supports web- based eLearning qualification programs and a variety of forums and webinars. For the Indian printers to get organized and take advantage of the global opportunities, it is necessary to provide ongoing education and skill development training in best practices in production and color management and standardization. Brand owners and printers alike need to communicate in the same language and for this they must recognize the need to continuously add value to their human resource.
We need trained and qualified professionals and the IDEAlliance eLearning courses provide an ongoing opportunity to economically create an abundance of trained technicians in the farthest corners of the country. In addition, we need to create G7 experts who can hand-hold and help those organizations that want to achieve G7 Master qualifications for their plants. Moreover, the emphasis of the G7 approach is to create qualified professionals and experts within these companies. In the beginning and whenever necessary, IDEAlliance India will bring in experienced G7 expert overseas consultants who can help companies achieve best practices and color standardization.
It is for this reason and with the help of NPES that the Color Management Professional Print training and certification courses are being organized in New Delhi on 15-16 February and two one day courses are being organized in Mumbai on 20 and 21 February 2014. While the Delhi course is sold out, the Mumbai courses are wide open on both days. We encourage brand owners, publishers, wide format signage printers, commercial, packaging and label printers to join IDEAlliance and take advantage of the special discounted rate for these training programs.
