Two years ago, a Kodak Versamark VT3000 high-speed continuous feed ink jet press was installed at Vakrangee’sMarol Industrial Estate unit in Mumbai. AsDineshNandwana the chairman and managing director has said numerous times, “we have identified immense opportunities in government and private sectors for our services including digitisation of physical data. We will invest Rs 200 crore (US$ 50million) by 2010 to exploit these opportunities.” Vakrangee is planning to set up digital data processing and printing centres in ten Indian cities by 2010.

The company already processes and produces voter identification cards for the Maharashtra government. It has also begun the processing and production of records and user cards for the Uttar Pradesh government’s Tehsil Land Report Development Authority and the state’s digital ration card project. Vakrangee’s principal activity is to scan and digitise records and data electronically and to produce various forms of authoritative, validated, and secure published public documents including personal identity cards. It is already involved in the generation of electoral rolls that will contain photographs of the voters.

Vakrangee has established itself in the public record, government and quasi-government domains. It has undertaken eGovernance and other semi-government and private organization projects that require large amounts of data capture or digitisation, validation, and output in large numbers such as election and ration cards were always seen as an opportunity but never before addressed by a private company with the software expertise and scalability that Vakrangee has generated.

The Indian Right to Information Act is also seen as a driver for Vakrangee’s business since government officers are required to answer
public queries within 30 days or be personally fined. Vakranjee’s perception is that this cannot be done meaningfully without the complete
digitisation of all government documents. In fact the company has it own software development and production centre in Bangalore that has developed an eOffice or electronic workflow just for Indian government
organisations.

Vakrangee Softwares’ second Kodak VT 3000 digital inkjet press is to be installed in Gurgaon, in the New Delhi national capital region within the
March 2008 timeframe. The next step according to Dinesh Nandwana is to cover the major metros by going to Kolkata and Bangalore. Bangalore will look after the Chennai metro for now since Vakranjee’s software development and production centre is already established there.

In the next phase the company will set up data handling and
digital printing facilities in Hyderabad, Pune, Chandigarh, and
Jaipur. To fund its expansion projects. Vakrangee plans to use its internal accruals.

Not content with just government document digitisation, processing and printing Nandwana sees huge opportunities from the private sector as well, “There is a huge demand for document, printing and turnkey solutions from the private sector and we are looking at these opportunities aggressively.” The telecom, banking, insurance, aviation and retail sectors are seen as prime targets in the private sector space for secure digital documentation services thatwill require high speed full colour variable digital output.

Being the largest the most clearly committed user of the Kodak Versamark with a clear vision, process know-how, and growth plan as well as access to resources, Vakranjee and Kodak maintain a special “gold” partnership for the use and support for the Versamark variable inkjet hardware and software. Creed Engineers headquartered in Gurgaon have pioneered the use of the Versamark continuous inkjets from the days when the technology was a part of the Scitex stable, are the distributors for the Versamark as they are full set of security printing and packaging solutions.

Kodak and Creed have been able to drive high speed transactional printing in the country for variable documents including telephone and electricity bills and bank and credit card statements. Increasingly they hope to drive the use of full variable colour, which this technology and the Vakrangee installations are capable of. While this form of data mining and direct mail marketing known as “transpromo” has been talked about a lot, it has not really taken off in our country. It is here that Vakrangee’s skill sets in securely handling large databases, and scalability including high volume full colour variable output, canmake an impact on both private and government sector clients.