Repro to produce 12,000 POD books per day

Ramu Ramanathan (RR): What is the Repro strategy for doubling its capacity with units in Delhi and Chennai?
Pramod Khera (PK): Currently we are producing 2000-2500 POD books per day. We are seeing a week-by-week growth and expect this daily run rate to increase. Anticipating the increase in the daily sales, we are increasing the capacity in Mumbai. We are adding capacity in Delhi and Chennai so that we are closer to the customer. Also, we are able to service the orders from those parts of the country, faster.

RR: At a time, when book print majors in India are seeing a dip in their profits, does Repro India see a revival?
PK: Book printing industry is struggling to manage their businesses profitably. With the transformation that Repro has undertaken from being just a printer to a value added book distributor cum printer, we feel that we will be able to improve our profitability. 

RR: Repro speaks of an expansion entailing an incremental investment of Rs 10-15 crore that would be funded through internal accruals. What is the investment for? Machines or services?
PK: This is the investment required to increase our capacity from 6000 to 12,000 as explained just now. The investments will be in equipment. 

RR: Repro's long-term debt has come down to Rs 75-80 crore, compared to Rs 100 crore some six months ago. Is this because of pick up in export orders to USD 1 million?
PK: This is because of the recovery of receivables from the African market. We have reduced our debtors from Rs 120 crore to Rs 49 crore which has improved the cash flows and helped us to reduce debt. 

RR: One big area of concern for Repro India is, the strike at the Navi Mumbai factory? What is the update?
PK: The Navi Mumbai plant is operating with a limited staff and giving some output. Our other plants in Surat and Chennai are currently bearing the extra load. We are ensuring that the delivery schedules for any of our clients do not get affected. Q1 being a slow quarter has also helped us to manage the load effectively. 

RR: What's the update on tie up with Ingram Content Group - one of the world’s largest content aggregation companies in order to optimise the e-retail opportunity?
PK: Through its tie-up with Ingram Content Group, Repro gets international titles for selling in India. Currently Repro is selling more than one million international titles in India and these are received from Ingram as digital files. When we sell a book in India from these titles, we print and we deliver to the customer. Hence, we are not actually stocking a single copy of any of these titles. This is where the power of virtual inventory comes in and we do not have to maintain large warehouses with inventory of these books. 

RR: Repro has been keen to follow the "Aggregators Model" and become the new messiahs of the industry where brick-and-mortar is giving way to virtual.
PK: Yes, Repro is becoming an aggregator of titles from Indian publishers. These titles are also being sold in India, without maintaining any physical stock of the books. These digital files from Indian publishers are also being given to the Ingram Content Group for global distribution. 

RR: Vinod Vohra spoke about the Repro solution working towards benefits for publishers. Repro's Bhiwandi POD ops is a good example of some of this being achieved. ​But how many more miles to go ...
PK: We are aggregating digital files of titles from publishers. We only print the books when we receive an order for the book. Hence, we are able to sell books without the publisher having to maintain any inventory. Hence for the publisher it is a zero inventory, zero obsolescence, zero warehousing costs and zero returns model. 

RR: What's the update from markets like Nigeria? A year ago, the fall in oil and commodity prices, led to a shortage of foreign currencies in a market like Nigeria which in turn impacted your book trade? Has the situation improved as was evident in the recent Nigeria Book Fair?
PK: The situation in Nigeria is improving. We have been able to recover a large part of our debtors from that market. We are also seeing some revival of business from Nigeria. This quarter, we have clocked business worth 1 million dollars from that market.

 Pramod Khera and Rajeev Vohra of Repro with the Prosper

RR: Repro has solid relationships with publishers and the governments in 22 African countries. What are the book trends in this territory according to you?
PK: The African market is a large market but is mainly driven by funding from multi-lateral agencies. Some of the countries saw a downturn due to macro economic situation of low oil prices and foreign exchange rate fluctuations. With things slowly returning to normalcy, we expect more spending happening in the education sector, thereby leading to a growth in demand for education books.