Meerut-based Arihant Publications, one of the biggest educational reference book publishers in North India, started with a single book for ITI entrance exams under the guidance of Deepesh Jain. Subsequently, his brothers Reetesh Jain and Parvesh Jain joined the publisher.
Arihant publishes over 3,000 titles for engineering entrance, NDA, UPSC, state and central level exams such as CTET for government vacancies, and school reference books. It publishes educational reference books for CBSE, ICSE, and the UP board for all subjects. It produces about 2.5 lakh softcover books daily at its 13-acre plant on the outskirts of Meerut, near Delhi.
The company’s 3,500 employees work across its five editorial offices in Delhi, Jaipur, Noida, Bengaluru, and Meerut in addition to sales and distribution locations and the book production plant. (On a personal note, I started my writing career at Arihant Publications’ Daryaganj editorial office, which has since shifted to Noida, as an author for their English educational reference books for CBSE and entrance exams.)
While Deepesh Jain looks after prepress and marketing, Reetesh Jain is in charge of sales, finance, and purchase while the youngest brother, Parvesh Jain, whom we met on a recent visit to Meerut, takes care of post-production, dispatches, and the supply chain. The current CAGR of 20%, and the construction of a second production plant on an adjacent six acres, highlight Arihant’s strategic focus on enhanced production capabilities.
Photo IPP
The book production plant is big with 26 web offset presses, a dozen multicolor sheetfed offset presses from Heidelberg and Komori, and four BindLIne 5000 perfect binders installed in the past three years in addition to its older Muller Martini and Kolbus lines.
The digital solution for short-run books
Recently, to balance mid and long-run book production with its short-run requirements, Arihant invested in web-fed inkjet systems from Monotech Systems. It ordered two webfed monochrome Monotech KnowzzleJet presses during Printpack in 2022, which were installed in 2023. And it has just installed a Monotech webfed JetSci KnowzzleJet-DL high-speed color inkjet – the advanced full-color version of the technology.
On our recent visit to the plant, Parvesh Jain commented enthusiastically about the new color inkjet press, “Our journey with the KnowzzleJet presses has been remarkable. The monochrome version exceeded our expectations, delivering a 6 to 7% growth in our short-run segment. With the addition of this high-speed color inkjet web press, we are poised to double our short-run capacity within the year.”
Arihant’s skilled team prints up to 1,000 copies of a title on the web-fed KnowzzJet presses while the longest digital runs can go as high as 10,000 copies.
Noting that the company’s association with Monotech went back to when it installed half-a-dozen Basys CtP machines supplied by it, Jain adds, “I would rate Monotech Systems’ after-sales service and product quality above other players in the market.”
Automation, when used in the right place, reduces running costs, and improves the accuracy level of production and logistics. The publisher uses automation in book handling, packaging, and production systems, with a 200-foot spiral conveyor connected to the four production floors of the plant to move the packaged books from production to the warehouse.
Along with this, the publisher uses bar and QR codes to automate its bundling, loading, and packing systems. The ERP system locates each title stored on the warehouse grid using a QR code for packing and logistics.
Meerut – an emerging publishing hub
“Meerut has emerged as an educational publishing hub in the last decade due to its large number of institutes, colleges, and universities,” Jain said, adding that the city has seen substantial growth and expansion in the publishing and printing industries in past years. “The quality and standard of education in the city has also been upgraded in the last three years.”
“We are trying our best to provide good educational solutions to students. Our USP is the latest and updated content in our books which we associate with our team of young students for content development. The team helps us to get new ideas and inject a fresh vision to our reference books, which we release in the earliest possible time frames,” he said.
