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T.E. Raja Simhan

Globally, HP has around 4,000 customers for its Indigo presses and in India it expects to reach around 100 in the next couple of years.

MR ALON BAR-SHANY

Chennai , Dec. 27

Hewlett-Packard, the $90-billion US-based technology solutions provider, is betting high on India to sell its Indigo digital press, a digital printing solution.

In the last 18 months, the company had sold 23 Indigo presses and aims to double the number every year for the next five or six years, according to Mr Alon Bar-Shany, Vice-President and General Manager, Hewlett-Packard (HP) Digital Press Division.

HP has partnered with Redington, an IT supply chain enhancing solution company, to sell and support Indigo digital presses in India.

Demo centre

Besides providing support, sales and logistics infrastructure, Redington has invested in an Indigo digital press demo centre in Chennai to provide customers an opportunity to experience digital offset printing without having to go abroad. This is the fifth for HP with two in the US, one in Singapore and one in Europe.

Last year, HP spent around $1 million (Rs 4.5 crore) on advertising, trade promotions and creating awareness in the Indian market on Indigo press, and would continue to spend a similar amount annually in the next few years, Mr Bar-Shany told Business Line.

`On demand' digital offset short run printing is the latest technology that is fast catching up in India in colour printing. The technology offers the quality of traditional offset printing while capitalising on the efficiency of a totally digital workflow.

With HP's Indigo digital press, print files go directly to the press thus bypassing the traditional steps of film separations and film stripping, resulting in savings in pre-press costs. The Indigo range includes a series of digital offset presses made by HP in Israel. The technology used is based around the ElectroInk, which uses small colour particles suspended in imaging oil, he said.

7 billion pages

According to Mr Bar-Shany, globally there has been a 40-50 per cent growth of pages printed digitally between 2004 and 2005 to around 7 billion pages a year. Five years ago the number was around 200 million, and five years from now it would be 25 billion. These pages are coming from short-run applications, personalised direct mail, labels and specialty applications such as yearbooks and photo books.

Globally, HP has around 4,000 customers for its Indigo presses and in India it expects to reach around 100 in the next couple of years. "India is far behind countries like the US or Germany in adopting the digital printing technology. However, compared to others India is moving fast with the latest technology," he said.

According to Mr Bar-Shany, global customers for Indigo press range from small operators with around 20 employees to mid-size companies with about 500 employees.

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