Steady growth for Karshak Art Printers

Karshak is a firm to watch out. A Jagan Mohan Reddy founded it in 1980. A self-made man, Reddy is engaged in the printing of books and bank stationery. His motto: “Make regular investments; fix the bottlenecks; plug the technology gaps; and chart on the growth path – because you can’t stand still in the business of printing.”

 

Reddy said, “The investment of Rs 8-crore in this new unit is to tap multi-colour book work for private publications.”

 

Therefore, at Karshak new investments are frequent. About seven years back, when Hyderabad was gaining a toehold in the textbook printing business, Karshak took the plunge into web offset printing with a single-colour Orient press and then in the next year, it invested in Orient 4i pneumatic fully loaded web press, a Newsweb 578 and a Prakash 508.

 

That’s how, today, its unit in Vidyanagar houses a strong taskforce of perfectors, multi-colour sheetfed presses and web offset presses (see factfile) and finishing equipment that churn out six tonnes of paper daily. In the pre-press division, the firm has two CTP platesetters – a Basysprint CTCP and an ECRM violet CTP – that serve the company’s monthly requirement of 12,700 plates.

 

According to Reddy, the book business will continue to bring in revenue for the next five years, but the volumes are taking a toll. For the future, Reddy is eyeing the packaging and corrugation market. He has invested in a platen punching machine. “Packaging is a different ball game. The dynamics are completely different from book printing. The punching machine is the first step to experiment with the new trade. Automation will come once we gain confidence, which we surely will,” says Reddy.