Smile Digital Press, specializing in digital print manufacturing, is located in the Gandhipuram area of Coimbatore. Started in 2017 by partners Ashik Abdul Jabbar and Ashik Abbas, the press prints stickers, brochures, visiting cards and product labeling solutions with its team of four employees and has big names among its clients.
Coimbatore is the third largest city in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, situated close to the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border. Situated on the banks of the river Noyyal, it is known as the textile capital of South India. Coimbatore is famous for foundry and automobile industries, textile industry equipment, spares, motor pump sets, wet grinders and varied engineering goods and services.
Smile Digital Press company recently installed a Konica Minolta AccurioPress C7090. The CMYK cut-sheet toner press offers advanced and creative print possibilities, including good-quality imagery in full bleed. With the AccurioPress C7090 and another Konica Minolta AccurioPress C2070 acquired in 2018, the company has been able to ramp up its print capacity from 2,000 to 5,000 sheets per day. According to Jabbar, the Konica Minolta presses offer good performance coupled with good-quality prints.
Apart from the Konica Minolta presses, the namesake owners have finishing machines, JMC cutting machines and laminate creasing solutions. The Adobe InDesign designed templates are printed and supplied to customers in Chennai and Bengaluru along with exports to the Netherlands and Australia.
Smile Digital Press prints posters and certificates for software companies such as HCL Technologies, Payoda, and Appviewx. It prints marketing and promotional materials such as brochures, business cards, and POP standees for hotels such as Le Meridian and Hotel Residency. For Amazon, it prints certificates, stickers, badges, and posters for in-house employee appreciation. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Smile Digital Press printed stickers and labels for sanitizers from local brands.
“The Indian commercial digital printing industry is growing every year with new customers approaching us for print jobs. However, competition is heavily coming up in the industry. While 10 years ago, there were four printing machines per region, now that number has gone up to 40 – 50 machines per region, which has affected our profit margins to a large extent,” Jabbar said over a telephonic call with Indian Printer and Publisher.
Currently, Smile Digital Press outsources offset printing jobs. Jabbar is quick to add that they plan to invest in offset printing machines from Heidelberg or Komori in the near future and also visited drupa24 to explore offset and digital printing solutions.
