We recently met two of the three co-promoters of Utility Forms PL, Praveen Agarwal and Rajiv Mathur, at their head office and and factory in Delhi.. Utility forms was set up in 1983 with an investment of Rs five lakhs by Praveen Agarwal, a chemical engineer from IIT Delhi and two co-promoters. Right from the start Utility concentrated on the private sector, and as a result their client base even today consists largely of banks and big companies. The company pioneered personalized cheque books printing with Standard Chartered bank ten years ago. They were also the first to introduce offset printing for computer forms in north India.

Utility Forms started with computer stationery and then moved to security printing which is still their main revenue generator with cheque books, Optical Mark Reading sheets, and personalized bank and credit card statements forming a large portion of their production. About ten years ago the company started variable data printing and today does quite a bit of commercial printing as well. UF prints OMR sheets for over 52 universities in the country. They also print mark sheets and certificates for a university abroad. They develop their own security measures for banking stationery and now almost all the major banks in the country are customers.

Rajiv Mathur showed us around their 40,000 square feet factory in the Mohan Cooperative Industrial Estate. The company bought a Rotatek 6-colour roll to roll and roll to sheet mid web press in 2002 which can print 4 + 2 colours on front and back at the same time. The machine also does online and MICR numbering. The roller collator from Rotatek has an online gluing system.

A sheetfed Xerox 6135 monochrome digital press, which prints 135 pages per minute, was installed four years ago. Utility Form’s recently installed a Kodak Versamark high speed inkjet is being used to print bingo tickets for export amongst other variable products. Last year two new Heidelberg machines were installed, a 2-colour PM 74 and a 4-colour PM 74. The machines are used to print bank statements, cheque book covers and a small number of magazines as well. Utility Forms’ current expansion spend caters both to growing demand and competition in the market.

Utility has a hundred HP 9000 laser printers spread over their five units in the country -- Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and two that are within the premises of the State Bank of India at Mumbai and Chennai. Utility’s own in house maintenance division to remanufacture printers and refill cartridges is crucial when machines break down and delivery time is short. Their infrastructure also includes a Pitney Bowes 8 series, inserting machine, which can insert automatically into almost any size envelope as long as it is a top open envelope. Mathur says almost all the jobs they do merge printing with variable printing.

Talking about the industry scenario, Agarwal said the market is highly competitive with the cost of all inputs including manpower increasing. Paper prices increase almost 10 to15 per cent every year. Another issue is training and retention of manpower, a common problem for all players across the industry. Agarwal believes “running the business is not about printing anymore but managing resources, people and innovation. Those who can cut costs will survive.”

Utility Forms has recently started getting export orders, which include bingo tickets for New Zealand and Australia.. They are also on the look out for a strategic partner who can bring technical expertise to the company, new product ideas and know how. Agarwal hopes they can increase their export percentage to 20 per cent soon. Utility Forms had a turn over of Rs 20.6 crores last year (2007) and are targeting Rs. 30 crores this year.