Sagar Shejwalkar, head of the department, Printing and Packaging Technology, SIESGST said, “We want our students to experience the current pre-press scenarios in printing and packaging industry. This is our step towards making our students industry-ready.”

“Esko facilitated the procurement of the licences as part of its educational initiative,” said Shejwalkar. Post the purchase, the department has decided to make Artioscad and Deskpack as a standalone course in their current curriculum. The department has planned for four hours a week practical sessions with the software. 

Artioscad is structural design software, which is used for designing of corrugated packaging, folding cartons and POP, POS, FSDU displays. Deskpack is a collection of packaging pre-press editing tools for Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

“We have planned to initiate the training from next year and it would be a part of sixth semester syllabus,” added Shejwalkar. According to Shejwalkar, this would enable students with hands on experience of using the software and help them in implementing the software knowledge in the industry.

Niranjan Delavictoire, general manager-South Asia, Esko commenting on the initiative said, "We want to facilitate students access to best in class pre-press software and this programme will help assist the institutes to adequately train their students to meet the growing demands of the packaging industry especially in the structural design and pre-press areas where there is a immense scope to increase productivity, eliminate re-work and wastage."