Akruti, the Pune-based print production house, was founded by Girish Rao in 1995 and is now a leading entity in the city’s commercial printing space. The company operates from two units spread over 8,000 square feet in Pune’s Parvati Industrial Estate. Akruti started life as a screen printing firm and was also doing offset printing jobs but that was being outsourced to a third party. With unreliable third party sources and recurring quality issues, the company started in-house offset printing operations by installing a Heidelberg single color machine in 2005. With growth in volumes, Akruti took a bigger step when it invested in a KBA Rapida 74 4-color offset press in 2009.
The company has enhanced the KBA press with Easy Trax auto scanning system and ink setter. Believing in excellence, it also has a PUR binding machine from Welbound, a first in Pune. The shop floor also has Morgana Digifold folding and creasing machine, Stahl automatic folding machine, Polar Mohr cutting machine, Champion thermal lamination machine, die punching machine and booklet making machine.In the prepress department, Akruti has a Kodak CtP set up along with GMG color management software to reproduce sharper images with better colors. Keeping with the tradition of embracing the latest technology, the company became one of the very few entities in India to use Kodak’s Sonora plates.
Rao has taken another investment decision of installing a third offset press, a brand new Komori Lithrone 4- color press with coater. The deal was signed in October last year and the press will be installed in May. The press will come with the essential full color management system. Earlier this year Rao visited the Komori manufacturing plant in Japan to better understand how the press works.
“We are doing a lot of jobs for customers in the construction sector where coating is needed. For our real estate clients we mostly print on textured paper and coating is an essential part of the job,” says Rao while explaining the rationale behind going for the latest press. Rao adds that getting the Komori Lithrone with coater is also the first step of moving closer to a full-fledged packaging printing division.
Packaging printing
Rao says Akruti has always been on the lookout for growth and innovation and the decision to gradually add packaging printing activity to the business is part of the growth plan. However, he points out that Akruti will not take up printing regular cartons for the pharmaceutical industry but would look at meeting the demands of the premium carton market.
“In addition to our commercial printing business, we would like to venture into new areas to maintain the required growth of the company. As part of our move towards packaging we have recently started a new line of business where we make premium rigid hard boxes under the brand name Unbox. It is the brainchild of my son Sahil Rao,” says Rao.
The purpose of Unbox is to cater to clients who demand items such as designer chocolate boxes, cake boxes, gift boxes, wedding ring boxes, promotional boxes, invitation boxes and other products. The focus is on high-end clients who would pay a premium for the high quality jobs.
Not only is Akruti looking to achieve further growth by expanding into packaging but the focus is also on its commercial printing business as well. It is looking to aggressively penetrate the Goa market where it will be setting up a sales and client services office. “There are not many quality commercial printers in Pune. All the printing activities will be taken care of from the Pune plant. Logistics will not be a problem as Pune to Goa is just an overnight drive. We can quickly deliver to our clients there,” says Rao.
Visiting drupa
At this year’s drupa, Rao would be trying to understand what is the latest in the digital printing technology and if there would be anything that could be adopted at Akruti. Digital printing makes sense for Akruti because its Unbox division mostly deals with short-run jobs and eventually a digital set up would be required.
“Yes, I agree that at some point we will need to have a digital set up and that is what I would be studying at drupa. However, by when we will have a digital set up in-house I cannot tell at this moment,” he says. Apart from studying the latest digital technologies, Rao also plans to find out about the latest in post printing technologies such as automation in textured UV, foiling, and other technologies.
