Real structural calls to action anchored the final panel discussion, titled Women in 2026, What More and What Next?, at PrintWeek’s Leaders and Legends held at the Westin in Goregaon East, Mumbai.
Moderated by Sai Deepthi, news editor at PrintWeek and WhatPackaging?, the conversation brought together four industry leaders: Deepa Naik, general manager of packaging innovations at Hershey India; Mehzabin Nair, managing director at Skanem India; Sukanya Bose, director at Planet Dezign; and Zeenia K Patel, general manager of business development at Jak Printers.
Shifting from volume to value
The panel opened with a reflection on operational milestones over the past 12 months, highlighting a widespread industrial pivot away from commodity manufacturing toward consumer-centric capability.
Nair detailed Skanem India’s move from volume focus to value focus. She remarked, “We [do not] want to be a commodity supplier. And we have really invested our time, money, and energy to have strong cultural value.”
This sentiment was mirrored by Patel of Jak Printers, who noted that customer unboxing expectations are driving rapid innovations in high-end structural boxes. She emphasised, “Capability is strength. Capacity is just volume. If you are not capable enough to use that capacity, you are not going to get anywhere.”
On the brand side, Naik outlined how Hershey India embedded its packaging innovation teams within consumer insights rather than just looking at technical blueprints. Meanwhile, Bose tracked Planet Dezign’s scaling from specialised showroom branding to constructing large-format factories pan-India, navigating global supply chain crises in the process by aggressively onboarding domestic raw material vendors to protect delivery deadlines.
The true cost of sustainability and tech
Addressing the financial tensions governing sustainable packaging, Naik addressed the commercial trade-offs built into the green transition, describing sustainability as an inevitable, premium investment. She observed, “How sustainability can be affordable is the biggest trade-off at this moment,” urging organisations to find a balance between corporate green ambitions, retail convenience, and baseline material functionality.
Bose added that modern tier-one clients no longer view sustainability as a late-stage add-on. She notes, “[For us] sustainability is not at the end of the design, but as the thought process of the design from the brief,” highlighting that durability and multi-use modular installations are just as critical as raw material choices.
The panellists also detailed a sharp rise in technological integration. Nair spoke on combining advanced digital presses with end-to-end backend administrative automation to track planning, production, and quality control. She warned, “If you have automation in bits and pieces, it is not going to solve the problems.”
Naik shared Hershey India’s success in deploying localised digital packaging simulation and optimisation tools to model risk factors, saving substantial physical experimentation costs while heavily boosting team deployment speeds.
Redefining corporate inclusion
The conversation took a candid turn when the panel evaluated the status of women in the manufacturing and industrial workforce. Nair challenged the conventional corporate paradigm of spotlighting women merely as an exceptional minority. She stated point-blank, “We do not want to be in the spotlight. I say this because I think it is very important that we do not want to be special. We want to be part of the team. We want to be one of you. We are humans, and the first step is accepting ourselves and stopping special treatment.”
She turned the mirror back onto industry infrastructure, highlighting the historic asymmetry between expecting household support versus building genuine workplace safety nets. “We always expect families to support. But as an organisation, as a company, as an industry, how much are we supporting?”
Naik reinforced this view, arguing that modern corporate leadership should rest entirely on executive capability rather than gender. She pointed out that because printing and manufacturing have historically had minimal female exposure, a visible gap remains at the top. To fix this, she urged companies to place women into high-exposure, cross-functional fields like finance and plant operations.
Patel highlighted basic structural oversights, stating that “the truth is the basics of even toilets are not available in many places today,” calling it the number one priority for floor-level workforce retention. She also pointed out a gap that draws talent toward client-side marketing or people management functions rather than technical plant settings.
Bose agreed that while women excel naturally in people management, corporate development must bridge the technical literacy divide.
The panel concluded with a consensus on how human resource teams view career interruptions. Both Nair and Patel urged companies to stop treating parental or personal career gaps as professional liabilities during hiring cycles. Nair challenged the industry to build frameworks that embrace returning professionals, emphasising that a woman who dares to step back into the market after a break brings immense resilience.