Comeback time for digital press biz

25th October 2009
Comeback time for digital press biz
Vipin Tuteja, Executive Director, Production Systems Group, Xerox India, addressing the media and (right) part of the Xerox stand at IPEX South Asia 09 ( photos AnandParthasarathy)

Xerox launches in India at IPEX show, point to double-digit resurgence in digital enterprise printing Mumbai: Standing –room-only audiences at continuous demos of one of the most powerful digital colour presses to be launched in India by Xerox, said it all: the brief lean period was over and business was booming once more in the Indian job printing sector. One of Asia’s largest print industry trade shows – IPEX South Asia 09 – now underway in Mumbai – was harnessed by the document management leader to unveil its recently launched flagship –the iGen4  colour cut sheet digital press . Also shown was a new colour production system, the DocuColor 7002.

Consider that a typical iGen installation together with a reasonable software suite come at an asking price in excess of 30 million rupees and one can see why they are talking of growth rates in comfortable double digits in the India-based digital printing business. Customers are just discovering the advantages of digitally enabled technologies like variable data printing, printing on demand and print from web -- and a premier partner of Xerox, like Delhi-based Friends Digital Colour Solutions tells us he can expect a return on such big investments to start flowing right from year 2.

“Digital printing is a Porsche without a key”, says Vipin Tuteja, Executive Director, Production Systems Group, Xerox India, “ The key is the customer relations”. And in India, seemingly, the customer is just waking up to the techno-commercial edge that going digital can provide.

And it is not just in the high-end jumbo-sized press business. An innovative Mumbai-based software house, Karizma(KarizmaXpress.com), has launched a customer-friendly tool which allows lay users to upload their digital photos from a thumbdrive to a self service terminal and to have them printed and bound as books or albums with a level of personalization that would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago. The back end of this solution is a fairly affordable Xerox printer like the 242 or the 700. Expect to see such kiosks all over Mumbai – and increasingly, through franchisees across India, soon.

Anand Parthasarathy/Oct 25 2009