UK’s Arden Software eyes growing packaging market in India

According to Manish Bhaskar of Arden Asia Pacific Software, based in Ghaziabad, the company is a world leader in the development of innovative CAD, manufacturing, enterprise and workflow management solutions for the print and packaging industry. It focuses exclusively on delivering solutions that enable companies reshape their pre- and post-production activities, and help make their businesses more innovative, efficient, productive, and profitable.

Earlier, Arden had an indirect presence in India and its products were sold through an arrangement with Kodak. Recently, the company decided to set shop in India and sell the products directly through Asia. The reason for this, of course, is the growing packaging market in the region. “The growing size, need and requirements of the Asian market prompted us to be positioned closer to our customers and partners in Asia,” said Bhaskar.

The company’s flagship product is the ImpactCAD designer, an industry leading keyline design, layout and 3D visualisation software for corrugated and folding carton packaging. “We are the only software in this domain which runs on a database, making it easy to collaborate, archive, retrieve and control the versioning of the design projects,” explained Bhaskar.

Apart from ImpactCAD designer, the company has another tool especially for die-manufacturing – ImpactCAD Diemaker. This deals with different aspect of die-making, such as rubbering, ruling, stripping, blanking and so on.

“We also provide the enterprise tool, Impact Enterprise, where multiple facilities are connected to centralised database with fail-safe mechanism. This ensures real-time collaboration, maximum control and maximum flexibility on customer projects,” Bhaskar added.

Besides, the company has a web-based project lifecycle management and workflow automation tool WEBcnx. “This enables connectivity and communication between all stakeholders in the packaging supply chain to avoid and remove bottlenecks and delays in the customer projects. This also provides a repository for customers’ digital assets like images, etc,” he said.

Arden has 40 installations in India and over 350 installations across Asia. “Globally, we have more than 10,000 installations. A few prominent Indian customers include Diehard Dies, Zenith Die Makers, Orient Press, among others,” said Bhaskar.

In India, Bhaskar said, Arden has a lean team of three people including him, to drive business across Asia. “Apart from me, we have one person who heads the technical side of the business and another one who is responsible for sales,” he said.

Bhaskar see a great opportunity for Arden Software to bring its proven and long developed products and services to the growing and emerging markets within Asia.  “We’ve had great success so far and want to continue to deliver packaging solutions that give our customers a business-winning advantage. We’re able to offer solutions for newly developing businesses and can also facilitate those who want to switch from other systems,” Bhaskar said.