Flourish Profits with Forms in Digital Era

The 2024 edition of Print Summit by Bombay Master Printers Association (BMPA), concluded on January 18, 2024. Team BMPA organized a wonderful event as usual. Getting knowledgeable speakers to share their wisdom, sixteen years in row, is no mean feat. BMPA deserves a huge applause and appreciation for their efforts.

This year, the event started with Musthafa of iD-Fresh Food sharing how his company has enabled the making of complex South Indian breakfast recipe across the globe. He illustrated how packaging design helps connect emotionally with the buyers. iD-Fresh’s ready to make filter coffee pack has been designed the way a normal filter coffee container looks – a wide base bowl and narrow tube-like glass. Other packaging is innovative too — butter sticks that avoid the use of a knife to spread butter on toast, grated coconut packaged in coconut shells, parathas (Indian bread) in triangular shaped packaging. “Common sense is the ingredient of innovation,” says Musthafa

He further added that spending money to build a brand initially is not advisable. Instead, it is necessary to get the product and support right, be transparent, and trust the customer. His company used technology to counter allegations of adulteration by opening their manufacturing facility to the public and live streaming the process for one week.

The second address of the day by Sumanth Bhargavan of ITC was again about snacks and food. When ITC got into the FMCG segment, it was already dominated by global players. Bhargavan’s strategy was based on ‘doing by learning’. Along with his team, he explored street food in different regions of India to understand eating habits, ingredients, and tastes. His team observed that in Western India besan (gram flour) based soft snacks were popular, but in the South rice-based hard snacks were preferred. ITC launched Mad-Angles, a snack that combined tastes from the West and South, and it was a big hit. Similarly, in the noodles category, they came up with non-sticky long noodles that kids love to play with and are motivated to eat. This product captured a 20% share in the children’s food segment.

To improve efficiency in their processing plants, they took their employees to the production floors of world class food processing plants. The message was that there is always ‘scope for improvement’.

The company also made innovations in the crowded wheat flour segment. They sourced different grades of wheat for different regions – soft for the South and a little hard for the North. Today, ITC’s aata (flour) has a 40% market share.

Panel Discussion: At the event, there was also a panel discussion with four women entrepreneurs — Priyata Raghavan of Sai Packaging, Sanna Vasi of Triace, Siddhi Shah of Printstop, and Zeenia Patel of Jak Printers. The moderator was the energetic Iqbal Kherodiwala. These businesswomen have created their own success path by diversifying into packaging, thriving in commercial print segment with innovative designs that connect emotionally, introducing online portal enabling corporates to design, plan and execute print jobs and printing on array of substrates including fabric and readymade garments.

Devdutt Patnaik, well-known mythologist, was also present and he threw light on the relevance of scriptures to business. Roshan Abbas, theatre and media professional, highlighted the importance of networking and keeping connected with people.

Another panel discussion was moderated by Ankul Wanawaty, with Abiali Jani, Akash Zaveri, Arjun Vaidya, and Rishubh Satiya. They shed light on successful startups, which were sold at rich valuations and are now sitting on millions of dollars. The importance of storytelling in valuation to attract investor interest was the key point of this discussion.

The concluding 2-hour address by film Industry Icon Boman Irani was riveting. His speech was a master class in storytelling; he narrated his struggles in life, recounted real-life anecdotes that shaped his career, and reinforced the importance of a never say no attitude. The takeaways from his address were:

  • Never assume.
  • Stop judging, be kind, be nice.
  • When you succeed, don’t stop enjoying your work – keep working hard. If you stop the world will still keeps moving and you will be left behind.
  • Playing the victim card is dangerous.
  • Don’t grumble, focus on what you want, and never give up.
  • Find time to sharpen your skills.

We look forward to the next edition of this wonderful event — the Print Summit on January 16, 2025.