Coimbatore-based Glo Colour Labs has been a pioneer in the photobook market in India. The digital print house runs a fleet of HP Indigo presses from its five production centres in South India – two in Coimbatore, and one each in Chennai, Salem and Madurai. By the end of January, the company will commission another production centre, its sixth, in Bengaluru, which will house an HP Indigo 3050 press. The company already has an Indigo 3050 in Salem, an Indigo 5600 in Chennai, Indigo 7800s in Coimbatore and Madurai each and an Indigo 10000 in Coimbatore, making Glo the biggest customer of HP Indigo in India.
“The Bengaluru unit will handle short-run and proofing work apart from photo albums. Essentially meant as an extension of the Coimbatore centre, the decision to open a production centre at Bengaluru was based on the commercial importance of the city,” TS Ramanan, managing director of Glo Colour Labs told Indian Printer & Publisher while taking time out from the hustle and bustle at Glo’s stand at the Consumer Electronic Imaging Fair (CEIF 2016) from 7 to 10 January in Mumbai.
Hyderabad within this year
Further expansion is expected later this year when another production centre will open in Hyderabad.
“We will cover the entire South India region once the Hyderabad production center becomes operational,” Ramanan added. Talking about the CEIF 2016, Ramanan said it was a successful event which saw his company launching 22 new products for the photobook market. However, he added that the number of visitors from South India was slightly lower than last year.
Make print cool again
Currently, Glo generates a large chunk of its business from photobooks, primarily wedding photobooks. According to Gamyanth Shren, head of operations at Glo and Ramanan’s son, with the Indigo 10000 the company plans to explore new segments. New avenues will extend to high-end packaging printing, publishing and general commercial printing. “Areas such as packaging printing, commercial printing and publishing constitute a very small proportion of the work we do currently. We would like to print highend cartons and publishing is also something which interests us. However, we do not want to work for large publishers. Our main target customer is someone who wants to self-publish. Basically, someone who may not want to, or cannot take the risk of ordering large quantities,” said Shren.
Posters are another segment where Glo will work to generate more business in 2016, as it sees strong underlying demand in the Indian market. “The size advantage offered by Indigo 10000 would come in handy when meeting the demands of this market.” From Glo’s point of view, said Shren, the future of the photo industry will hinge on creating an appeal for the printed product, or what he calls the idea of ‘making print cool again.’ This can be achieved by offering solutions and not just plain prints. According to Shren, the longterm objective is to diversify to some extent from the wedding photo market. “At present, our main customers are professional photographers. But now we also want to explore the amateur market. The current generation is very expressive and wants customized products. The whole idea would be make this generation go for conversion of content into print. Web-to-print holds the key for this segment,” Shren concluded.
