smartphotography.in

P.N.Raghuvir, Vice President – Marketing
(CDG & GCG),
Kodak India

The Indian print industry is 80 percent offset and 20 percent digital. Many digital print majors, including Kodak, are already eyeing double digit growth. In your assessment will digital printing overtake offset?
It is true that we are seeing a huge growth in the Digital Printing market, and is likely to remain high for some time. However, the market for offset printing is shifting from conventional film based printing to CtPs. We have been seeing a huge growth in our CtP equipment installations, as well as plates sales in the last few years. We think that the market for both will continue to grow for many years, with digital printing growing faster and bridging the gap with conventional printing.

Printers generally complain about the lack of service in India and the varying cost of day to day operations. How do you plan to reassure the Indian customers of cutting invisible costs while ensuring a level playing field?
Kodak takes equipment and customer service quite seriously. We have a wide range of equipment with different requirements from a service perspective – from low cost scanners to Thermal Printers to CtP equipment to high end Digital Presses. Our customers range from independent printers to big BFSI corporations to government. To better address this critical function, Kodak has set up a dedicated ‘Service Business’.

The innovative Kodak Nexpress Photo Platform prints helps merchandisers to expand their portfolio by offering more value added services. Is the Nexpress portfolio ideally suited to cater to competitive market conditions?
Yes, we feel Kodak Nexpress Photo platform is ideally suited for India. First of all, it delivers very high quality photo prints. Secondly, the Kodak Nexpress has various features that allow for unique prints. Take for example, ‘dimensional printing’. We see customers using this feature to highlight jewellery in wedding prints. We have had huge success with the Kodak Nexpress in 2011 and expect the same in 2012.

The adaption to newer technologies, work flow solutions, web-to-print solutions is the way forward to help print service providers improve efficiency. What is Kodak’s vision for the future?
Kodak wants to be the best partner to its customers to help them make, manage and move images and information easily. We feel that in order to achieve this, as well as scale, we need to invest in work flow solutions. While we see a lot of graphic printing customers beginning to see this value, whereas the traditional photo labs are yet to focus on this. However with increasing costs and reducing margins, we feel more labs are currently turning to work flow solutions to manage their businesses efficiently.

Mathew Thottungal