Themed ‘New Horizons, New Hopes’, the seminar was inaugurated by BE Satish, president of Karnataka Offset Printers Association (KOPA) and had O Venugopal, vice president (South), AIFMP as its chief guest along with guest of honour Richard D’Sa, AVP, marketing, Manipal Technologies.

V Vaidyalingam, director of Suba Solutions delivered a keynote address which he called ‘Pep talk on the time bomb’. In his speech, Vaidyalingam said that when looked through the prism of pollution, economy and employment, we get answers for most of the serious issues that we as individuals, as business or as society face today.

Using data and statistics on all the three elements, he showed how these factors affect business leading to cut-throat competition, uncertainty in business, reducing margins etc.

The long line-up of speakers who addressed various aspects of the printing industry included Amritpal Singh Bawa, national head - business development DIS of TechNova, Madhukar Manoj, NSM, Boettcher, Ganesh Kumar, product manager – labels, Heidelberg, Samarth Chandrashekar, BDM – software, Esko, Gururaj Rotti, SAM – converting and graphic arts, HB Fuller India, Rajesh K S, AGM, TNPL, Babu P, TSM (South), Redlands Machinery, Gurudutt M S, business analyst - digital print, EFI, Vijetha Shastry, lead – open innovation, NASSCOM and Tejas Alva, associate, Global 3D Labs.

Ravikumar KL, principal, GIPT, Bengaluru was the chief guest of the valedictory function. In his address, Ravikumar emphasised the need for right skill development of printing technologists to extract high quality and productivity. He also highlighted the need of mutual understanding and support of industry and academia to uplift the print community to the greater heights.