In this “Over the Skype” session, K.S. Ashik has a great conversation with Assistant Director Marketing Mohit Bansal from Naph Graphics. Naph Graphics is one of the larger newspaper press vendors in India. In this session, INKISH India leads the conversation about the market, the products, the current, and the future. Why should a customer choose Naph Graphics? You will get at least some of the answers in this Over the Skype session.

As with all our ‘Over the Skype’ interviews, quality is limited to bandwidth, web-cams, and ability to literally LIVE mix the conversations. However, it works, and with Over the Skype, we will bring you more than 20 exciting people, and angles on the industry as it is right now.

Enjoy!

Hello! Yeah.. Welcome to Inkish India. So we have Mr. Mohit from Naph Graphics. He is based in the capital city of India- Delhi. And Naph Graphics is one of the major platforms developing
Cold Offset Machines. So, Mohit can introduce yourself and introduce your company and could you please do that?

Okay. Well, I am Mohit Bansal, and I represent Naph Graphics Pvt. Ltd. we are basically into manifacturing of Offset Printing Machines and

we have now a really good database, customers, who are satisfied enough and have got installed many machines all across India and world. See, all are aware that Indian Print Industry and basically the newspaper industry is having shown a tremendous growth.

Trememdous growth in the past three years. Now we have about a 100…over 100,000 daily newspapers, and there are so so so much magazines, by weeklys, fortnightys, everything is there.

So how do you see the market?

See, agreed. It has grown in in..(…)…like it has already grown now but now it’s on a declining phase what I believe.Print market is still going down and down People are having less orders, somehow and their readerships have also decreased.

But somehow like there are certain customers of ours who are getting businesss regularly, and they are getting more machines.

So I still think that it would take another 10 years or maybe 15 years to like for this industry to stabilize again I guess.

See, one of your main product is the Cold Offset Machines. So could you please little bit elaborate on that? How do you see the market of these machines and are you the monopoly in the business or so.. Could you please elaborate on that?

Yes. See, cold offset Machines are manufactured by lot of manufacturers, as of now, in India. We can talk about so many companies like Manugraph, then there is The Printer’s House and there are other brands like Prakash, NBT. There are a lot of people who have been manufacturing. But somehow talking about the Cold Offset scenario, it is now as I said earlier also, it’s on a declining phase.But, there are certain markets, smaller markets wherein it’s still going on.

See, about the quality of your products and about the ranges of… I think, I think you have, you have lot of, lot of products.

About the quality of the products, about the range could you please elaborate in that aspects?

See, we have been, we have got our success because of the different style of the products that we are manufacturing. In India, that Offset was brought in by the TPH- The Printer’s House.And they had somewhat like a model of cost immunity and they were… whosoever came in they started taking the same design and they started building machines on the same design. Whereas we tried and innovated a different kind of a machine where we used some staggeredness in the cylinders and we tried and made machine more userfriendly and we have tried to achieve more perfection in print.

So that’s what we have been doing. And there are a lot of things we do in our machines that other manufacturers are not giving as of now. Like we are giving bearer to bearer machines, then … we are giving… like safety features like safety keys so that if there are any major accidents, so the safety key breaks, and the machine comes to a stop. And apart from that the major advantage of our machines is our folder. The newspaper folders which are really heavy duty folders which are based on 2:2:1 principle.

So these are different things that we have incorporated in our machines and we continuously keep achieving perfection. And we try and look for more perfection.

See, for example, I am running a newspaper here, so my question is still: Why I need to choose your products?

See, we have innovated a lot of things for newspaper also like because people who brought in the concept of Underneath Restand. Usually if you see in the market, there are people who have towers separately and there are restands separately. But we are the first one who incorporated the restand underneath the towers. So this made the machine much more compact in terms of
the area it required. The length as well as in the overall plan. So we have decreased that radius. So that’s the first thing that we have given our printers, newspaper printers. And apart from this the other things are like the folder, the speed at which we can run the machine, is far better than what others have been giving. I agree, like there are folders with speed of 55,000 and 50,000 also. But the output that you get actually on our machines is still better.

I hope you also explain a little more about the quality of your product and the environment of your products.

See, talking about the quality, that is our main concern. And as our motto says “Our Quality, Our Commitment”. We are always thriving for satisfaction as well as the perfection and the quality. So what we usually do is we give lot of spares with our machine and the quality is such like if there is any breakdown or anything, first, first and foremost is the service backup we are providing to our customers. So that is the reason why people are buying are machines regularly. So if we talk about, in Calcutta there are printers who have got ten machines now, twelve machines now. And they are running it succesfully. And we don’t have anybody stationed in Calcutta. We send people from Delhi only, for service. So that is quality. Why people come to you again and then they buy. So this product itself speaks for it. More or less the mettalurgy that we are trying to use is better. Then there are small small things that a printer asks for. We are always open to help out printers and the production staff there.

So that’s what is required. Specifically the service, which is the major criteria. And the parts should be available in no time to the customers. So that makes the product with quality.

Right, Right. I, I agree on that. And how the setup time for this.. and installation time?

Sir it depends upon… the setup time and installation time is like for a tower, it is almost like a day, maximum, to actually set up the machine and make it ready for print.

And I guess for… in 1.5 days you can do the entire run. Provided you get all the things available… readily.

Like electrical connections, air connections, and rest of the things.

So you are saying that within eight hours need for installation time?

Yeah, that would be done very easily.

How it possible within a short time you can install such a huge system?

Sir we have done it in quite many places. Provided we get everything on time, whatever is required.

If we start 9 am in the morning, then we can very easily do it by the evening 6 o’clock. And we have done it quite many places.

That is sir, that is really fantastic.

But I’m talking about a single tower. Not the entire newspaper setup.

Right, right. So, could you please tell us about your market, market in India?

See, as in all if we talk, we have a major market as East India.
We have around like 55-60 installations now, there. Apart from that, then we have South as our good market.

More or less we have sold machines everywhere in India. There are only one or two states I guess where we haven’t sold it yet. We gave it like in spare parts but we didn’t get many orders, fresh orders from there. But I guess we more or less have got machines everywhere in India now.

How do you see the western market…maybe in the Europe market or USA market? How do you going to tap these markets?

See, we have people like Mr. R.D.Gupta, and then Mr. Praveen, and Mr. Rajkumar who are constantly looking for these markets, outside markets. And more or less if we talk about the European market or the markets is USA, Canada, I guess they have shifted to a far better technology than one in India right now.

And those are all fully automated machines. And those are on a different level. From India, it’s… India still needs more time to go onto that level what I believe.

But but still, but still… when you are considering about the Cold Offset Machines

India is the market leader. Am I right?

Yes, yes! India is the market. If it is… If you talk about the European machines and Indian machines the first and foremost is the price. And for, for Cold Set new brand new you not even get a European model at a second hand price.

So India is that’s why a better market to go for.

Ok, ok. That’s right. And now we are facing a pandemic situation. And how do you expect the market after the Covid, after the Covid-19?

I really don’t know because there are lot of customers right now also facing some small problems in their machines. We’re trying to get them sorted over the phone. There are a lot of people who require spares as of now. So, probably we’ll generate some business from spares. But I really don’t know

what’s going to happen after Covid-19. It’s, it’s, it will be too lame to say anything about it.

That that you are right. That you are. I am also agreeing on your point. And recently I have, we have, we have published a news, an article from a Malyalam newspaper. They are, they are doing some precautions. You know, the people is having some, some sort of a thing, you know that this Covid could spread through these newspapers. So, many of the newspapers are disinfecting their printing machines and their printing process, they are disinfecting. In this aspect, do you have any plan?

See, we are also looking for certain things but we are still not clear whether it’s being spread through contact with the newspaper or not. Firstly, we have to be very sure whether it’s being spread through contact with the newspapers. Because I’ve been getting newspaper at my house also and I have been reading it everyday, almost everyday.

But I really don’t understand whether it is, it can be spread through that or not. And parallel I am also checking with certain things that can help in the disinfecting the machine and the paper that passes from there.

And thank you so much Mohit for your time and thank you so much and we are expecting a good support from you also, in the coming days.

Sure, sir. Definitely! Why not?