Founded around the1960s by Paruchuri Hanumantha Rao, Pragati has grown notably over the years. The awards displayed in their lobby flaunt not only its success at being the best but also of being the only establishment "to recycle all of discarded material".

 

Some of the facts which we glean are: the seventh edition of the PrintWeek India Award saw Pragati Offset bagging the Brochure and Catalogue Printer of the Year and the PUR Book Maker of the Year. For Pragati, this is its fourth consecutive PUR Award, since the Award was instituted in 2012.

 

At Pragati, all the jobs are printed on a fleet of Mitsubishis (four) and Komori (three) presses that can print up to six-colour with the online coating in a single pass. Last year, the company invested in two new Komori printing presses, both of which are 20x30 inch and 28x40 inch with seven-colour, non-UV configuration and are equipped with anilox coaters. The firm replaced their earlier 28 inch and 40 inch Komori presses with the new presses.

 

These two new seven-colour plus coater Komori presses are used by Pragati for the implementation of expanded colour gamut (ECG) solution, Equinox, from Esko. The system uses this fixed ink set selectively for jobs with spot colours, which can be simulated by the colour gamut of seven colours.

 

While the Mitsubishi six-colour UV press is equipped with a double coater, allows printing on a range of substrates such as plastics, metallised sheets, etc. The double coater opens up possibilities for a range of inline finishing options.

 

We were walked through the entire plant and were explained in detail the elaborate three stage printing process using the machinery and a huge team of skilled staff - all of which contribute to Pragati’s hallmark quality product.

 

It was a privilege to have been given a chance to speak with the managing director of Pragati - Narendra Paruchuri. His words left us with something to think about and a beautiful 3D book called "My India" - A gift to the department by him.

 

Our next stop was to one of the largest magazine and commercial print firms: Kala Jyothi. Having been in the business for more than 60 years, Kala Jyothi has clientele some of the most popular tabloids in the market like Forbes, Outlook, Better Photography, Fortune, Autocar and PrintWeek India.

 

Kala Jyothi provides services from design to delivery solution for its clients and caters to the short run jobs like personal stationery to a hundred thousand plus copies of 24-page broadsheet newspaper in colour. The firm specialises in all forms of offset printing and produces products like books, posters, brochures, labels, cartons, stickers, danglers in addition to the magazines.

 

The Hyderabad plant has both conventional sheetfed offset press and also with UV; along with web offset with both cold set and heat set presses to cater to the needs of their client effectively. In addition to the plant in Hyderabad, Kala Jyothi has facilities at Kondapur, Mumbai and Noida as well.

 

Once again we were taken behind the scenes to witness how simple metallic encrypted sheets were processed to print 42000 sheets per hour all bound and packed to become the tabloids we see on the news stands.

 

It's true what they say - reading a textbook and witnessing it in action are two entirely different ways of learning, and the preferred one is pretty obvious.

 

More power to Pragati and Kala Jyothi. more power to print.

 

 

(Millusha Fernandes, third-year journalism student of St Xavier’s College, Goa)