The Meerut-based Vardhman Group contains Vardhman Books, its children’s educational publishing venture, a notebook division known as Vardhman Industries, and a printing and packaging vertical Basant Digital. Started in 1981 by brothers Anil and Sudhir Jain, Vardhman is currently run by its next generation leadership, Abhay Jain, Anuj Jain, Aditya Jain, and Apar Jain.
Located in Meerut’s Mohkampur Industrial Area for publishing children’s educational books for the populous Uttar Pradesh state, Vardhman Books provides books for all subject based on the CBSE school curriculum pattern for pre-primary classes and standards I-VIII. The printing and binding is performed at the company’s print and packaging plant, Basant Digital.
The notebooks division, Vardhman Industries, is the company’s original family business started by Sudhir and Anil Jain in 1981. It utilizes two Line-O-Matic automatic production lines along with several ancillary semi-automatic and manual machines. Vardhman Industries produces soft-bound, spiral, hard-bound notebooks and registers targeted at the state’s school and college-going population.
Basant Digital’s plant is in Gheja Industrial Area in Old Modi Nagar. According to Aditya Jain, managing director at Vardhman Books, who met us on our recent visit, the printing plant produces 1.5 lakh center-stitched and perfect-bound books daily, with 80% of these for its own publishing house, and the remaining 20% for other local publishers. On the packaging side, Basant Digital produces 2 to 3 lakh monocartons daily, including 70,000 – 80,000 3-ply corrugated cartons.
Basant Digital’s substantial offset pressroom operates two refurbished Heidelberg 8-color perfectors, a refurbished Heidelberg 6-color plus coater with UV, and two Komori 4-color presses. The postpress department includes a DGM Technocut 1050 automatic diecutter without stripping, a DGM TechnoFold 1100PC automatic folder gluer, a DGM SmartFlute 1450 automatic flute laminator, a side-pasting machine from Vijaya Graphics, one automatic window pasting machine with V-notch capabilities for angular cutting and scoring, and three corrugation machines from Natraj – one each for g-flute, e-flute, and b-flute cartons.
The bindery includes eight Stahl folding machines, two Muller Martini center-stitching flow lines, and two Bindwel 6-clamp binders for perfect binding, with the BW@2500 installed in late 2025, and a 3-knife trimmer from Hollenberg.
Jain explained that the DGM and Bindwel equipment have greatly helped to automate operations in packaging, converting, and book-binding departments. Basant Digital uses Siegwerk inks and Henkel adhesives to maintain its reliable quality in print and postpress operations.
The company does not face any major challenge with trained manpower, as its reputation in Meerut is high, and prospective employees are interested in working for the company. “We are a second-generation paper business, so we have many contacts in the local paper segment, and procurement and pricing are not much of a challenge either.”
Apparently, the GST slabs of 18% GST on packaging inputs and 5% GST on packaging output, introduced by the government last year, have had an impact on production and profitability. Though the prices of raw materials and consumables have been fluctuating due to the ongoing war against Iran, the hikes are likely to subside once the situation approaches peace, Jain concluded.
