Abhimaani had to re-think its strategy

In the print and publishing sector, Abhimaani Industries has specialised in commercial printing like books, journals, magazines , diaries and calendars. The pandemic impacted our business and we lost the entire year. This is due to the educational institutions being shut down. Plus the central government announced that they would not print new year calendars and diaries. This brought the industry to zero year. It was a huge shock to the industry who depended on such print orders. Our export business was nil during 2020 due to the world-wide lockdown.

Abhimaani Industries has made a huge investment on infrastructure for products manufacturing, we were left with no choice. We had to change the course by thinking. We had to be out-of-the-box. We have seen market growth in packaging by almost five-folds. Last year, the Indian Packaging Market was valued at USD 50.5 billion. By 2025, it is expected to notch up USD 204.81 billion by 2025. In 2020 we saw some of the faultlines and challenges in the commercial print system being accentuated. Whereas we have seen the packaging industry growing year on year by more than 25%. This has made us shift our investment strategy into the packaging sector by adding a raft of packaging machines.

I recall the initial days in March-April. Especially when you started to see the death toll coming through and the images of the critical care wards across the world with medical healthcare staff head to toe in PPE – I guess you realise the seriousness of the situation. Obviously our peoples’ safety was foremost, as was doing our risk assessments quickly so that we could continue production and support our key business.

Post-Covid, in the new normal, our entire press is ready to make the transition from commercial printing to packaging. Our team has been fantastic since and they are back producing work across a large range of sectors. We hope to boost our packaging arm since commercial print is down. The lesson we have learnt from the pandemic is we need to be prepared to face any circumstances and move forward with the demand in the market. The pandemic has allowed us the opportunity to sharpen our focus on our future strategy.

We are looking to the future in the best way possible – with positivity. We all need to adapt to the changing world and accept it will be different and seek out opportunities. I hope the coming year will be successful for all stakeholders in the Indian printing industry.