K Selvakumar: Commercial printing segment will soon go digital

One technology at the show that excited you the most?

I was very impressed with Heidelberg's new foil stamper, where all the settings are done on the computer. The amount of time it saves along with the reduction in the wastage of the foil is tremendous.

What were the upcoming trends at this edition of PrintPack India?

One thing that I observed is the growth of digital, a lot of digital machines and the kind of value addition associated with digital printing is commendable and then, of course, the finishing types of equipment are growing.

Which segment is shifting to the digital space?

So many things are being converted into digital, which is quite visible here. The commercial segment if you ask me, will entirely become digital after some time. Already many commercial printers have switched to digital, and whoever hasn’t been will soon venture into digital.

Why do you feel digital is growing?

From what I have seen from the web-to-print stalls and the kind of machines they have installed, it's tremendous. The future is going to be eCommerce. It is an eCommerce kind of thing, it’s certainly going to pick-up. I met with this company, Indus Analytics, they're actually doing some work for us and they showed us a demo of their product, a small MIS. The kinds of solution these small scale companies are providing is fantastic, which not even the big players are able to provide.

What has been the impact of the Union Budget on the Indian printing industry?

I don't know why the government is not highlighting it, but one of the biggest successes is the facility of automatic GST refund. Previously, getting the GST refund from the government used to be a very big challenge. Today, it happens without your interference with the submission of the regular documents.  You don’t have to submit anything special for filing the return, and the money automatically gets transferred in a short span of time.