Discipline and data reshape the future, says Preeti Mishra

Preeti Mishra, head of business development at Holosafe Security Labels, said that the printing and packaging industry demands a different rhythm and discipline than the fast-paced world of investment banking, and her first year back in the family business has reshaped how the company approaches growth, technology and client conversations.

Speaking at the Print & Beyond 2026 seminar in Kochi, Mishra, a second-generation entrepreneur who joined Holosafe after a career in investment banking, outlined five core lessons she learned after leaving finance and stepping into day-to-day operations at the 17-year-old company founded by her parents.

"Printing is not just about machines, about materials, about inks, about substrates. It is about people, problems and patience," Mishra told attendees, adding that small variables and coordination can determine whether a job is profitable. "Losses don’t announce themselves. They don’t come with red alerts, they just quietly eat away your margins," she said, describing an early job that looked solid on paper but delivered almost no margin once extra passes, wastage and idle machine time were accounted for.

Mishra urged printers to treat clients as partners in problem-solving rather than transactional buyers. "Clients don’t buy packaging. They buy confidence," she said, recounting a sales conversation that shifted from haggling over price to addressing a client’s counterfeiting losses. "The moment the conversation shifted from how much per label to how can we protect your brand, price stopped being the centre of the decision," she noted.

Highlighting how market demands are changing, Mishra argued the industry’s new normal is variability rather than sheer volume. Citing an experience in which apparently healthy monthly volumes proved to be many small SKUs with frequent changeovers, she described Holosafe’s move to a digital press as a strategic response. "This industry is no longer about volume. It’s about variability," she said, noting that rigidity often proves more costly than investing in flexibility.

Mishra also stressed the centrality of people and process. "Machines can be financed, but skilled people have to be built," she said, explaining that technically simple jobs can fail because of coordination gaps between prepress, plate making and production. "This industry does not just need operators. It needs techno operators who understand processes, not just a machine."

Data and measurement featured prominently in her remarks. Mishra recalled nearly losing a major client because repeat jobs were taking more than 40 days, even though the print time itself was only 15 days. "What you don’t measure will hurt you in the long term," she said, pointing to delays in artwork approvals and mastering as the hidden causes of the extended turnaround. For mid-size printers, she recommended ERP adoption and integration with clients so orders can be logged and tracked transparently. "A simple reassurance that the client gets that you know it’s logged in and the expected time of arrival just makes the process smoother and keeps the client in the loop."

Innovation and intellectual property are part of Holosafe’s response to commoditisation, Mishra said. Frustrated with price-driven competition, the company developed a patented dual QR code label that authenticates a product only when a top code and an under-peel code are checked together. "We came up with a dual QR code solution," she said. "This patented solution helped pharma and automotive clients fight counterfeiting and allowed us to protect our margins."

Mishra also flagged RFID and traceability as major upcoming shifts. Holosafe has launched a Trace Guard solution to follow products from production through the warehouse and distribution using QR today and planning RFID integration for the future. She predicted wider RFID adoption as chip costs fall and device capabilities expand, saying, "In the next few years phones will have RFID readers and a tap on the pack will show where and when it was produced and which channels it travelled through."

On strategy and market research, Mishra explained Holosafe’s top-to-bottom approach of monitoring trends in the US and Europe and adapting applicable solutions to the Indian context with a small research team that includes veteran industry expertise. "We have a monthly sit-down where we look at trends in the European market, in the US market, and then we kind of boil down to how it can relate to our company," she said.

Addressing why many printers fail to execute known best practices, Mishra attributed the problem less to capability and more to leadership time and operational constraints. "Many owners already know what needs to be done but are trapped in day-to-day operations," she observed, describing how her father, despite deep institutional knowledge, often lacks time to step back and redesign systems. She recommended owners make space to pause growth and fix the basics.

Mishra closed with a call for printers to move from vendor mindsets to advisory relationships, to build measurement and techno operational capacity, and to embrace variability as a business norm. "The winners in 2026 will be those who act like advisors, not vendors, who embrace variability, build techno operators and measure every step from artwork to dispatch," she said. "In a disciplined and people-driven industry, speed with judgement beats blind perfection and trust built through transparency beats market noise."