Kulakkada Pradeep highlights top trends in print

A major thrust of his talk was Industrial Revolution 4.0 and how it entails things like compartmentalisation of industries and cross-vendor collaboration. He underscored how the process will be green and eco-friendly.

He provided an overview of the Indian print industry which boasts of 250,000 big, small and medium printers plus a current annual turnover of more than Rs 50,000 cr. He said the Indian printing industry is growing at a rate of 12% per annum; the packaging print sector is growing at an annual rate of 17% per annum; and digital print is galloping at a robust 30% per annum.

Kulakkada Pradeep said, "In 2015, digital print accounted for 13.9% of all print and printed packaging in value terms, but just 2.5% of total world volume." He predicted "In 2020 digital will be 17.4% of value and 3.4% of all print and printed packaging volume." Today printing technology continues to develop for offset processes, but the major developments are transpiring in digital printing, particularly inkjet.

Some of the trends that were highlighted were: Slowly progressing from heavy machinery to a software-centric business; equipped with the latest computer controlled printing machines and automated lines for binding; state-of-the-art digital technologies in pre-press; UV digital printing and inkjet technology on the rise in India; and emergence of global brands, rising consumerism and growth of the pharmaceutical and food industry.

He added, digital advertising industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 32% to reach Rs 18,986 crore by 2020. One of the projections he made was how "the digital printing industry is seeing transformations with new technologies and applications providing cost-effective and customised solutions."

Kulakkada Pradeep stated, the companies are gaining control of printing, boosting their productivity with cost-effective solutions. The impact he sees is, it will reduce the printing office cost of up to 40%, improve productivity, and security. In addition, adoption of big data solutions will play a role in printing plus emerging and expansion managed print services, e-print and m-print in India and above all the adoption cycle for technology will be within a short time in India.

He concluded the talk with a prophesy that said: All syllabuses are out of box. Only helpful to earn marks. His mantra: Imagination, creativity and technology are the short key, plus its intelligent utilisation.