Operating from two locations, one inside Pune city and another on its outskirts, Unique Offset has a Komori Spica 246 installed in 2007 and a Komori Lithrone S40 that was installed in 2010. The new Ricoh Pro c651c has been installed at the Pune city location.
Explaining the company’s decision to expand its business with the purchase of a digital press, one of the partners Mandar Thakurdesai says, “We wanted to cater to the short run demand of our current customers as they were going to a third party for that.
With Ricoh we are taking the first step in a new field.” Mandar Thakurdesai and Nandkumar Navale, the second partner in the firm spent two months studying and researching various presses and finally zeroed in on Ricoh. “We thoroughly saw the machine in operation at Pamex,” says Thakurdesai.
Apart from the technology and brand reputation of Ricoh, a strong after sales and installation base in Pune were also important factors in choosing the machine, adds Navale. Speaking further of their reasons for venturing into the digital space, Thakurdesai indicated that customers now want a lot of jobs done in quick time.
“The demand for quality short run jobs has grown tremendously in the last few years.” However, he also emphasized that the competition in the digital printing segment is fierce in Pune and there are some real challenges.
The biggest challenge according to Thakurdesai is to live up to the reputation that Unique has built up over the years. “We have built a name for ourselves in the offset space such that customers would expect a similar service quality from our digital service too.
This is our biggest challenge.” Areas of opportunity for Unique’s digital printing include products like pamphlets and certificates. “But the most promising area for us is in seminar and exhibition related products,” says Navale.
Disclosing further investment plans, Thakurdesai says the post press division of Unique Offset will see some substantial additions of Welbound machines. “We have made a huge investment recently. If you include the Ricoh machine and the planned addition to our post press division, we have invested close to Rs. 1.5 crore,” he explains.
The two partners and founders of the company expect the industry outlook to improve in the second half of the 2014-15 financial year. They expect printing demand to improve in the real estate and automotive segments, which have seen a slowdown in recent years.
“The outlook for these two industry segments is that they will start to recover in the latter half of this year. This should bring back demand as these two are important industries for printing industry,” Thakurdesai concludes.
