This was followed with religious poster printing operations in Mathura, commercial printing for multinational companies like Dabur, Baidhyanath and Atlas Cycles in Delhi, and book printing, calendar printing and coffee-table book printing at Noida and Greater Noida. But since its early days, Brijbasi has earned its repute in printing religious posters and still holds it as its USP.
The family-owned company is spearheaded by three directors, namely Murli Lal Garg, Saurabh Garg and Apurv Garg. ML Garg is a print technologist from Germany and the managing director of the company. Saurabh Garg, an electronics engineer by education joined the business in late 80s. He is responsible for creation, production, studio and innovation. Apurv Garg a chemical engineer joined the business in 1997 and is responsible for marketing and overseas business.
Recollecting the long journey, ML Garg says: "In early days it was not easy to sustain because publishers earned business on the basis of long credit, and also importing printing presses was very tough. Now we are growing at the rate of 15-20% annually and working to establish Brijbasi as a product-focused company. Today, we have our presence in more than 95 countries through our export."
Inside Brijbasi
Brijbasi is powered by around 800 employees who run the facilities round the clock. The company has an in-house editorial and a very strong designing team of more than 80 designers. A quality control (QC) team comprising 60 people examine every product manually to ascertain that it matches the quality standards of the company. Brijbasi owns 2,50,000 sq/ft of area encompassing dedicated plants for commercial printing, poster printing and book exports at Noida, printing facilities at Greater Noida and sales office at Delhi.
Every month, around 13,000 thermal plates are utilised to feed their 56 multi-colour printing units from Heidelberg, Dominant and Planeta with eight-up size. In total, these facilities convert more than 2,000 tons of Indian and imported paper every month.
It's well-equipped post-press division includes folders from Stahl and MBO; sewing machines from Aster; case makers, casing inline, and 24-gathering lines and station binders, each from Kolbus. The division also houses three six-clamp book binders from Welbound, 12 die-cutting machines of Indian make, two stitching lines and Kolbus perfect-binding machines.
The huge capacity of the plants include small manual spine machines with a capacity to produce 60,000 case bound books a day, stitching line from Muller Martini having capacity to stitch 2,00,000 books a day, board to board and board to sheet paster machines which can produce 40,000 puzzle books and 1,00,000 perfect bound books a day.
Children’s book, calendars and posters
Children’s books is another vertical that has been gaining traction in Brijbasi’s product line. All the operations for children books are marketed under the brand name ‘Hello Friend’. A team of around 100 employees, including designers and writers, work in tandem to produce creative, colourful and innovative content on a regular basis for Hello Friend. In fact, the company boosted the distribution of its children’s book during 2007-2008.
The company claims that the books in Europe and America are at least three times expensive than those in India. Explaining the reason, Apurv says: "The Indian middle class buys less but good books as they are highly educated. In foreign countries, both the parents work so they do not have much time for their children as we have, and therefore, they try to fill the gap and engage their children by providing them with books." He also adds that company is ready to meet the growth in Latin America, Spain and Mexico.
With growing impetus and government’s policies towards education, Brijbasi sees huge opportunities in the education sector, but worries that the government fund might be misused. "Government books are regionally biased with bad quality and government money is totally wasted," says Apurv.
Apurv is also not optimistic about the future of Indian books in regional languages. "Books in Indian regional languages are not doing well as of now, and it will take another 20 years for the market to develop," says Apurv.
Taking Hello Friends to digital world
The digital arm of Brijbasi’s children books division is called ‘Hello Friends Digital’. It functions like a BPO to provide illustration services to support the new ‘digital’ mode of imparting education. Brijbasi sees ample opportunity in the digital publication world, but at the same time reiterates that print will not die.
"We believe that books take a long time to penetrate the market, but with digital, we can always update ourselves with new technologies in shorter span of time," says Saurabh.
"Segment like fiction is going down but others like non-fiction and education books are growing at more than 10% annually in India and around 8-10% worldwide. Let all the new gadgets in, we are ready for the opportunities. But nothing can replace books," he adds.
Exports to 94 countries
In 2003, Brijbasi established a 100% export-oriented unit at Noida and now it exports its books to around 94 countries. The company also claims to be the pioneer exporter of the books.
Apurv Garg, director, says: "We observed that there exists a vacuum of new and creative content in children’s books and therefore, we started exporting children’s books after tying up with some of the big European companies. This worked! During our first stint at Bologna Book Fair, Italy, we were booked ‘full’ on the stand set-up day. This really boosted our morale."
The company is growing with their partners at Latin America, Russia, France and Holland and developing books with better reach. "Content creation is expensive and therefore, the cost must be recovered by selling these books in several other foreign markets. Co-editions in other languages must be released along with the final product. Most of the time we have to decide whether we should work on the basis of royalty or a lump-sum amount," adds Apurv.
Working on present, eyeing future
Nearly 70% of Brijbasi’s total production comprises final products and the rest is service. It spends around Rs 5-crore every year on research and development, and asserts that it prefers to work on a profit-front rather than focusing energy on turnover. "Last year we posted a turnover of around Rs 100-crore and this year we are targeting Rs 115-crore," states Apurv.
The company believes in networking and partnering with companies around the globe. That is one reason why it always exhibits at London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, Bologna Book Fair and Book Expo America. "In our early days we went for around 15 fairs worldwide but over the years we have developed a network of stable clientele. We go for around four to five book fairs only. Business today depends on man-to-man relation as the price competition in the market is throat-slitting," adds Apurv.
Brijbasi has an overseas partnership with an Italian company as an exclusive production house in India and is also looking for overseas acquisitions, the details of which are still to be disclosed.
Asked about the future plans, Apurv says that after setting a strong foot in printing and post-press, Brijbasi has set its eyes on developing a strong product-based company. He also adds: "We would like to enter the African markets; but as an educational company, and not as a printer !"
(l-r) Saurabh and Apurv Garg
Brijbasi Art Press Factfile |
| Founded: in 1920 |
| Location: Delhi, Noida and Greater Noida |
| Specialty: Children’s book, coffee-table books and calendars |
| Equipment: Multicolour printing presses from Heidelberg, Dominant and Planeta, folders from Stahl and MBO, sewing machines from Aster, 24 gathering line and 24 station binder and case makers and casing inline from Kolbus, three to six clamp book binders from Welbound, twelve Indian made die-cutting machines, stitching machines and perfect binding machines. |
| Staff: 700 |
Brijbasi Art Press is one of the top 500 print firms in India. This rating is from THE 500 list which is published by PrintWeek India and powered by Xerox India.
