Aslam Press, Mysuru

Run by Ataulla Shariff and his son Sadulla, Aslam Press, established about 115 years ago, has made a profitable progress in value addition in wedding card business following automation in screen printing. “We learnt value additions such as UV special effects technique during the three-day workshop organised by DMI a few years ago. We use different design concept/UV special effects to different customers and we do not copy/repeat it. We now produce very special wedding cards by applying 5-6 UV special effects,” said Ataulla Shariff.

The after effect of this wedding card is such that it generated lot of enquiries from their family and friends. “We have now customers in Mysuru, Bengaluru and other cities in Karnataka, Chennai in Tamil Nadu, and USA and Dubai,” Ataulla added.

Party Invites, Jalandhar

As the name suggests, Party Invites is a designer and manufacturer of premium wedding cards, boxes and related products. The company has its 1200 sq/ft production facility in Jalandhar. It also has showrooms in New Delhi and Jalandhar, which are managed by Gagan Grover and his father Charanjeet Grover.

Explaining the role of screen printing, Prashant Tyagi, production manager, Party Invites, said, “Screen printing has a major role in our wedding card production, especially for value addition. With screen printing setup from Grafica, we apply various UV special effects such as bubble, spot UV (matt/gloss), reflective UV, emboss UV, glitter, and special colors for high deposition. Also we use other print finishing methods such as foil, emboss, laser cutting, etc.”

Tyagi said the company had to make ‘out of the box’ boxes with unique theme-based designs in different shapes, sizes, colours. “We use different substrates such as paper (140-350gsm), MDF, PVC, acrylic, board, satin, velvet, etc as per customers’ requirement and design elements. About 80% orders come with box set of wedding cards and only 20% are with card type,” he added.

Divine Products, Latur

Divine Products is engaged in the manufacture of wedding cards which are supplied to wholesale and retail wedding card traders in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, besides some customers in Delhi.

The company has two screen printing machines working in two shifts. “All put together, we produce about 10 million wedding cards annually. We have about 40 people to back our production,” said Nasiroddin Pathan, one of the partners of Divine Products. The other partner Nandkishor Bhutada runs a paper and wholesale wedding card trading business under the name Bhutada Agencies.

“We were in trading of wedding cards. We used to source wedding cards from manufacturers from South India. So there was dependency when it comes to design choice and quantity. Thus, we came together to form Divine Products in 2015, with in-house screen printing set up. The purpose is to explore different UV special effects and offer value addition to our customers,” said Bhutada.

To meet the growing demand for low cost wedding cards, the company has just installed a new four-color offset press at a new production facility spread over 16000 sq/ft. “We are going to shift all our screen printing and print finishing/post press facilities to this new premises,” said Nandkishor. “We will utilise screen printing facility for printing value added wedding cards. About 30% of the wedding cards produced by us are of high value (in the price range of Rs 200 to Rs 600 per card), and the rest is of low priced cards (as low as Rs 1 to Rs 5) printed in offset. We use different papers such as maplitho, art, handmade, Kraft, etc.”

Currently, the company is using most of the UV special effects, such as spot UV (matt/gloss), emboss, crystal UV, glitter, abrasive, structure, texture, high gloss. “We also have other print finishing facility such as lamination (matt, velvet, gloss), foil stamping, creasing machine, UV coating, die punching and other equipment. We also undertake text printing for walk in customers as we have a showroom in the heart of Latur city,” Pathan said.

As the wedding season 2016-17 is nearing to an end, Pathan said his company’s plan for next wedding season: “We have no time to rest. We create stock of new designs, chalk out production planning, market survey, etc,” he said, adding, “We have a name in the market. Customers come searching for us.”

The company had set itself a record of printing about 50 lakh wedding cards of a single design in the current wedding season.

Narinder Kumar Jain & Bros/ Vishesh Enterprises, New Delhi

Narinder Kumar Jain & Bros/ Vishesh Enterprises, a whole sale and retail wedding card supplier is located at the busy Chawri Bazar in New Delhi. The company has invested in Grafica’s complete screen printing set up to offer wedding cards that shine with UV special effects.

Narinder Kumar Jain & Bros was founded about 150 years ago. As a supply of papers, it used to import special wedding papers from the US and Europe for distribution in Indian market. For the last 15 years, its focus has been on retail and custom-made wedding cards, wedding box and paper bags. The company attracts customers from in and around Delhi, all over India, besides catering to NRIs.

The company has all infrastructure required for printing and fabrication work.

“With in-house UV screen printing, we offer wide range of special effects such as glitter, bubble, gloss, matt, with choice to print on wide range of substrates such as wood/MDF, paper, metal, velvet, satin, and acrylic,” said Vikesh Jain.

Nasuku Printers, Bengaluru

Being a wholesale wedding card manufacturer, Bengaluru-based Nasuku Printers realised the urgent need to go for automation in screen printing.

Set up in 1992, the company’s 1,500 sq/ft production facility houses couple of single colour offset presses and Grafica’s Nano-Print plus, foil stamping and all print finishing equipment needed for wedding card manufacturing. The company supplies wedding cards to retailers all over Karnataka.

Nagendra Singh CN, proprietor of the company, said, “Prior to automation, we had three manual screen printing tables. Being wholesalers, we always wanted to increase our production capacity. However, adding few more manual screen printing tables to jack up production was not a right business proposition. So we decided to go for automation.”

Eshwari Paper Mart, Bengaluru

Run by Krishna Murthy and his son Manigandan, Eshwari Paper Mart screen prints and supplies wedding card papers/wedding cards to wedding card wholesale and retail shops. These cards are screen printed on 150gsm to 200gsm paper board up to 10 x 20-inches size, using two Grafica Nano-Print, housed in their 1,500 sq/ft production area. “We used to employ four people per table. Now with two screen printing machines, requiring just two people each, we can achieve production of four tables,” said Krishna Murthy.

Sri Vinayaka Screens, Bengaluru

After automation, Bangalore-based Sri Vinayaka Screens has doubled its wedding cards production. The company has Grafica’s screen printing machine which they bought after struggling with manual screen printing for many years. Sri Vinayaka Screens is a manufacturer whole sale wedding cards which are supplied to wedding card traders in Bengaluru. The company specialises in making wedding cards using white board card. “Our wedding cards come with designs of pearl gold, silver, spray gold, matt. Besides we also use other techniques such as emboss and foiling,” said J Manikantan.

He added, “Owing to increase in work load we had to go for automation. Since we are bulk wedding card manufacturer, it was virtually impossible to meet production. With automation, wastage is very negligible, which was not the case with manual printing. In manual printing wastage was over 3% which was huge considering our bulk production.”

Sriram Cards, Hosur

Sriram Cards, Hosur, has deployed Grafica Nano-Print to screen print wedding cards. The company is into retail and wholesale wedding card business with customers spread in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. “We were into wholesale wedding card business, but in 2007 we also started retail business. To cater to the printing needs (inside text and cover printing) of retail customers, we invested in screen printing machine in 2015,” said KR Murali. “Wedding card printing is a seasonal business and our business largely depends on no. of weddings taking place in a particular season.”