Borivali headquartered SRK Digital has been Mumbai’s leading player in photo album market for more than three decades. In 2012, it took a significant investment decision and installed a Kodak NexPress SX 3300 PHOTO to augment its photo album business. A year later, with an aim to bring offset printing in-house, SRK Digital installed a refurbished Komori 528 5-colour plus coater. Having tested the waters in offset printing business, SRK went a step further and installed the second offset press in the middle of 2016. A brand new Komori Lithrone A37 was placed at SRK’s Bhyander plant along with the older Komori. With offset printing capabilities in-house, SRK began to take book printing jobs and witnessed a robust growth in that business segment. It also installed a Welbound single clamp machine and has plans to get a Welbound six clamp machine by April.
“The main reason for opting for a six-clamp machine is to reduce turnover time. We have done well in the book printing business and are looking to expand further into this space. We would like to interact directly with customers instead of going through a third party,” says SRK’s chief marketing officer Kalpesh Mehta. Currently, SRK is printing mainly educational books for the export market.
Further expansion in Pune and beyond
Mumbai is the main market for SRK but in 2015, it set foot outside and set up its first branch in Pune. Now, the city has four branches with Swargate branch, which was the first to open, being the hub with HP Indigo 3550 in operation. The other three branches are in Hadapsar, Pimpri and Talegaon. Currently, the Pune branches are dedicated only to wedding album segment. According to Mehta, Pune will continue to see addition of more branches.
“The market in Pune has significant potential, especially in the wedding albums segment. We plan to open six more branches in the city in near future. Also, very soon we will open our first branch outside Maharashtra,” Mehta shares.
“The main reason for opting for a six-clamp machine is to reduce turnover time. We have done well in the book printing business and are looking to expand further into this space. We would like to interact directly with customers instead of going through a third party.”
Print production services
SRK caters to a lot of photo labs from Tier-3 and -4 cities. Mehta believes that in the near future, these labs will move towards getting printing capabilities of their own. In order to help these photo labs optimize their printing capabilities, SRK will start offering print production services in the next one month time.
“It is just a matter of time when photo labs in these cities will start printing on their own. This is bound to reduce work at our end and result in increased printing in these cities. So, we thought why not help them become good printers by offering them the whole print production services for a fee,” Mehta says.
SRK will offer services such as recommending what kind of products to go for, which machine to buy, setting up work flow and training for color correction. A print expert will spend full one month at the client’s base for the training.
High-end packaging printing
High-end packaging printing is another area in which SRK has started focusing since October 2016. This area, Mehta believes, will add another dimension to the company’s photo, offset and digital business.
The purpose of the division is to cater to clients who demand items such as designer gift boxes, promotional boxes, invitation boxes, etc. The focus is on premium clients who would not mind paying money for the high-quality jobs.
