Owned and run by Dinesh Joshi and his wife Daya, DD Enterprises produces wedding albums, catalogues, broachers, visiting cards, invitation cards and jobs for educational institutions.

Dinesh Joshi said Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, which consumes around five lakh A3 sheets per month, has potential for growth. “I wanted to be a disruptor in the Lucknow market. To do so, getting a new, high version printing press was the only option. That’s why I approached Canon. The kind of innovation I can do with machine and the kind of quality and services I can give with the machine is unbeatable in the market,” Joshi added.

Following the investment, one year down the line, Joshi wants to grab around 25% market share of digital print production. The reason Joshi said is because, with the new machine, he will be able to print on textured media and up to 350gsm. “Now, I can offer choices to customers. Now, I can look at finished products, which earlier was not possible,” he said.

With the new machine, Joshi is also looking beyond commercial printing. Recently, the company produced 7,000 boxes for Halo Mobiles. So packaging is a possibility. Joshi also wants to offer services in book binding, lamination sheets, die-cutting. Recently, the company also made 1,000 books for the Geological Survey of India. “We want to offer products and solutions, not just print sheets,” he said.

The Imagepress C10000VP is equipped with the Fiery B4000 digital front ends (DFE). Canon has installed more than 30 C10000 in India. The machine delivers high resolution of 2,400x2,400dpi at print speed up to 100 A4 images per minute in colour and mono on all supported media weights for average monthly print volume of up to 4,50,000 sheets. The maximum monthly duty cycle of the machine is up to 1.5 million.

At DD Enterprises, Joshi said, the print run is around 25,000 (12x18/13x19) sheets per month. Now, the company is targeting more than one lakh prints. To achieve this target, Joshi hopes to get work from neighbouring cities like Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Banaras and Kanpur. “In the last two years, we have printed around 3,00,000 sheets on the Imagepress C700,” he added.

Talking about Canon’s association with the company, Puneet Datta, director, professional printing products, Canon India, said, “Joshi is not from the industry, but we saw a fire in his belly. He wants to overtake other printers, so he has to play big. Now we have to scale up his operators’ knowledge. He is still not into colour management and ICC profile, so we have to upgrade,” he said.

Datta added that there is a general lack of awareness in the market in UP and so is the approach to work. Thus, Joshi’s approach was different compared to other printers. “He invested first and then went to look for work. As we found that the existing C700 is no more capable to meet his aspirations to meet the production, we suggested the C10000VP. Click charges on high end machine are lower compared to a low-end machine,” Dutta said.

While offset rules the roost in Lucknow, Datta said the infrastructure here is better compared to many other cities, so it is possible to replicate the model of Delhi or Mumbai in Lucknow, but for this, someone has to take the lead. “Joshi is doing it,” Datta added.