Sajith writes, “When it comes to the sheer volume of books produced, India stands as the world’s largest market. While the United States leads in terms of market value, India’s dominance in volume is driven by its massive population, a strong education-centric culture, and a highly multilingual society. The demand spans textbooks, exam guides, vernacular literature, and increasingly, on-demand publishing.
“What makes India unique is not just the size of its market, but the diversity within it. Much like the FMCG sector, where SKUs cater to hyper-local needs, book publishing in India sees an extraordinary variety — driven by multiple languages, regional curricula, and cultural preferences. This makes the country not only a large market but also a highly fragmented and dynamic one, ideal for short-run digital book printing.
“As this trend continues to grow, Africa follows closely behind, with similar demographic and infrastructural patterns—large populations, rising literacy, and increasing access to education. Together, India and Africa are fast emerging as the most promising regions for short-run book production.
“The recent Hunkeler Innovationdays highlighted cutting-edge technologies in digital printing and finishing. Yet, one takeaway was clear: many global machine suppliers still design for the West—for the spacious, climate-controlled print floors of Europe or the US—often overlooking the needs of emerging markets.
“However, India’s infrastructure reality is different. Machines often need to fit into compact spaces, operate in non-ideal power conditions, and deliver cost-efficiency at scale. This is where Indian manufacturers like Bindwel have a natural advantage. With a deep presence in South Asia and Africa, Bindwel understands these constraints intimately. Its solutions are often more adaptable, modular, and resilient—designed for the very environments that most global OEMs have yet to fully comprehend.
“As the short-run revolution takes deeper root globally, India is not just a user of these technologies—it is shaping the ecosystem. The opportunity is enormous for those who listen closely to what this market truly needs.”
Transitions between generations in the publishing, print, and packaging and publishing industries although related to developments in each other, are not in simultaneous lockstep. Even within a 75-year-old democratic republic with a large and diverse geography and population, while change is contiguous and adjacent, it is not synchronized. This applies even more to the global adoption and adaptation of new technology.
As Sajith points out, the needs, characteristics, and speed of change are globally discordant, although the adaptations of technology can cause overlaps, such as the divergent reasons for short-run book printing in developed and ‘emerging’ economies. Sajith also shared that Bindwel’s collaboration with Canada-based Utimate Tech will help streamline the process of short–run book printing in these markets. The Ultimate Bindery completes the process, setting up the finishing equipment automatically and accommodating variable length products on the fly..
In this way, and perhaps many others, the sometimes uneven progress of our industries resemble nature. For instance, the migration from one segment to another, the absorption of new ideas and technologies, and the natural expansion and diversification of family businesses that can pass on their expertise to the next generation do resemble nature.
As does the time taken to find new markets and absorb new technologies. And not least to create a modern culture that eschews prejudice and poverty, moving slowly not in a straight trajectory, but zig-zags toward the lofty ideas of equity and sustainability. And also as Sajith implies, it is time that technology leaders look more closely in the direction of future needs and markets.
The future may not simply be Darwinian where the seemingly most powerful appear to be the fittest and most likely to evolve. One merely has to look at the recent consolidation of Hunkeler and MullerMartini to consider our industry’s path to progress. As some natural scientists and environmentalists suggest, evolution also benefits from symbiogenesis – from the coexistence and adjacencies of diverse species and cultures.
