Formerly known as Navneet Publications, Navneet Education is a company listed on the Mumbai stock exchange and quoted on the Mumbai Sensex as Navnetedul. A well-diversified entity, Navneet is a publisher in children and general book categories including activity books for children, board books and story books. A major book printer with a highly automated and modern environmentally friendly offset printing and binding plant in Dhantali near Ahmedabad in Gujarat, it has a stationery division as well. In February 2014, Navneet installed a Ricoh Pro C651EX at its plant located in the northern Mumbai suburb of Virar.
We were at Pamex in Noida last year and met with Ricoh officials and saw the demonstration of the Pro C651EX. We were happy with the machine as it met almost all our requirements,” says Tushar Limbachia, product development manager at Navneet. According to Limbachia, the main idea behind installing a digital press from Ricoh was to save both the time and money involved in proofing. Currently, the Ricoh Pro C651EX meets the needs of the exports division of the company, which produces children’s books and stationery for exports.
“Initially we used to do a lot of proofing which took considerable time. And since we are in exports, we need to send samples quickly to our clients and customers. Thus the Ricoh is mainly used for sampling of very short-runs of 10 to 15 copies which need to be sent to customers for approval,” says Limbachia. Apart from using the Ricoh Pro C651EX for printing samples for clients, the press is also being used by the Virar plant’s innovation centre.
“The export market for children’s books and stationery is quite competitive. In such a situation, fast innovation is very important. For quick work we have to do it in-house. It is here that a digital printing machine comes in handy and we can deliver new concepts to clients in a short span of time,” states Limbachia.
Navneet went in for a Ricoh when other options were also available in the market as Limbachia indicates, “We looked at almost all the digital printing machines present in the market. Every brand has one
limitation or the other which is quite normal as no machine is perfect, but Ricoh came close to what we needed. We found that Pro C651EX could print on 54 gsm to 300 gsm, poly, and PVC substrates amongst others. It fit the bill.”
While for its normal and high volume production, Navneet uses Heidelberg and Komori offset presses, Limbachia has been very satisfied with the performance of the Ricoh and has not faced any issues. “Our relationship with Ricoh is not just limited to buying machines or after-sales service. We make it a point to be constantly in touch with the company to get information about the latest technological developments that are happening in the company. This is important because we would be interested in incorporating any new changes to our machine in the future,” he says.
Children’s books is a niche which has seen robust growth in the recent past with an increasing number of urban children entering kindergarten in India. Limbachia feels this trend of children entering kindergartens will continue to grow as more children in tier-2 and tier-3 cities begin to go to school.
“The market will be driven by the rising number of kids going to kindergarten along with the fact that more books will be bought for these kids. In India, books are seen as vital to the development of kids. Hence parents should encourage their children to buy more books. A lot of stress is given to knowledge as parents focus a lot on reading and writing skills. Unlike in the West where eBooks are catching on, the traditional book market in India is still important and will continue to grow,” Limbachia concludes.
