Industry A-Listers to brainstorm on Day One of InkWeek

As many as 32 industry experts will share their views during the five-day webinar which PrintWeek and WhatPackaging magazines along with Siegwerk India and Hubergroup is hosting from 21 to 25 March 2022. 

Day One promises to be a power-packed panel discussion that will provide a perspective about the industry. The industry A-listers are: Aaditya Kashyap, managing director of Marks Emballage; Ashwini Deshpande, co-founder, director at Elephant Design; Gautham Pai, executive chairman of Manipal Technologies; Priya Singh, vice president – production and digital resources at Hachette India; and Ashesh Mukherjee, vice president and business unit head – sheetfed business, tobacco business, India. The moderator for this session is: Ramu Ramanathan of PrintWeek and WhatPackaging? magazines.

Ashwini Deshpande shared with us that “India has a large subsistence level consumer base. Moving to a packaged branded product itself is a self-appraisal. Design is not a luxury nor a cosmetic indulgence.” The co-founder and director of Elephant Design will discuss packaging design in the Covid era and share some of the trends which the packaging fraternity encountered in the first wave and second wave of Covid.

Gautham Pai shared with PrintWeek and WhatPackaging magazines that, "Throughout the year, we saw significantly higher input costs in our uncoated fine paper business due to higher pulp, energy, transport and chemical costs. Therefore, we have been implementing various price increases of our products during the year. This is the only action we can take: increase our prices. All commodities plus input costs have gone up for most types of business and end consumers have to pay for the cost. We are informing our customers to plan their paper requirements months ahead, due to the global squeeze on the availability of some paper types." This will be top priority in the discussion.

From the perspectives of a trade publisher, according to Priya Singh of Hachette, said there have obviously been ups and downs. "From the palpable fall-off in March during the first wave, we’re seeing a comeback of sorts,” she said. "But with orders being a lot more conservative due to the paper problems and fears of inventory stockpiling, digital print has grown while offset has fallen."

Two or three trends that Singh shared with PrintWeek are: hardcovers giving way to paperbacks, with shrinking print runs, many publishers relying on digital printing From and a return to normalcy. Singh said, "if not normalcy but at least to the old ballpark.

Also watch out for presentations from the industry's who's who on the remaining four days. These are: Akruti, Anaswara, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, Gujarat Print Pack Publication, Marks Emballage, Parksons Packaging, Print Vision, Taco Vision, UVbiz and Conran Design Group; as well as Chakravarthi AVPS of Ecobliss India; P Lakshminarayanan of Signode India - Wintek - and Ramakrishna Karanth, CEO of Siegwerk India who will address the delegates across five days.

Sudhanva Jategaonkar, B2B business head at Haymarket SAC Publishing said, "Printers, converters, supply universe, and brands would derive value from the initiative. Everyone must attend. Already we have notched up 250 registrations." Jategaonkar concluded, "The essence of print and packaging creativity is the ability to either look at different things from everybody else or to look at things in a different way. That's what InkWeek is about!"

PrintWeek and WhatPackaging magazines along with Siegwerk India and Hubergroup India are the hosts for InkWeek.

Free registration. Click here to Register.