Completing the Bachelors of Arts in Economics at Sasthamkotta, Kerala, India, Ajith Kumar came to UAE in 1992. Since, his graduation is towards the economics he decided to challenge any industry which comes in his way but few of the senior persons as well as acquaintances suggested to him to enter the printing industry where the hard work pays more tribute.

 After coming to the UAE in the year 1992, he joined in a printing press called Al Taawon where he was wholly taking care of everything out of his own interest and he was there until 1995. To learn more about the printing industry he joined in Gulf Commercial Printing Press where he was taking care of all the Sales activities and he was there until 1998. Later, he made his venture as Printing in charge in Al Sama Printing Press and relieved as a general manager of the press in the 2008. However, during those periods he had some intentions that he should start a press on his own. With all these experiences, he take over the Golden Line Printing Press in 2008, which was formerly owned by Ali Abou Taam.

Talking about the Golden Line, he commented, “The printing press was started in the year 2004 where they were doing the business in some small scale. I come to know that they are planning to sell the printing press where my insight told me to buy the company. During 2008, there were around 22 members in the company and as soon as I took over the company I have made a pretty big investment with Mitsubishi 5 colour with coater machine and Sanwa die cutting machine. All the other printing press was surprised to see such a huge investment and that too during the recession period. Even, few of the persons thought that I would not run the show  and sell the company in a small span. However, with the confidence of my employees and with my hard work I thrived like anything. Presently, the press is having around 80 employees where we are doing services across many products.”

 

HIGHLIGHTS

● During the recession period the company has invested around 1 million AED and prospered.

 

● The company is having around 80 employees within these years

 

● They are maintaining the zero wastage policy to over the margin

 

He further elaborated about the machines they have and the services they do, “We are specialized in packaging where we are focusing on perfume boxes, pharmaceutical boxes, corporate broachers, annual reports, product catalogues, coffee table books, magazine, calendars, shopping bags, promotional leaflets, posters, danglers, stickers, and many more. However, we mainly focus on perfume and pharmaceutical boxes. Apart from this, we do handle the stationery requirements with our dedicated team. To accommodate all these requirements, we have machines like, fully automatic pasting machine SBL-Taiwan where it has the feature to do 72,000 per hour, MOL from Germany, die cutting machines Sanwa from Japan and Yawa from China.”

Talking about the hobbies and success, he commented, “I am a person who believes that helping the penurious people would bring more happiness to your life and that’s why I have a trust in Kerala called Dharmashastha Anna Dhana Trust. Through this trust, we are providing morning breakfast to the needy persons from 2010 and until today we haven’t stopped it for a single day. To overview the trust, I am there in Kerala from Thursday to Saturday of every week. I always opine that every owner should take care of the inventory, accounts, and sales. Only when they come to know about these, they can attain success. Since, I am following this, we didn’t have a single cheque bounce or pending salary for all these years. Also, I believe that every owner should work at least 12 hours inside the office so that they will come to know what is happening with the press. Finally, there is several printing presses are here so the margin has literally come down drastically so we are working on the zero wastage concept to overcome the margin.”

Narrating about the credit policy, his press future plans, and retaining the employees, the trends, he added, “The credit policy varies from 30 through 180 days and we cautiously handle them to avoid crisis. Our future plans for the next five years would be investing in machines like, fully UV printing and fully automatic cutting machine but as far as about expansion we don’t have any idea on it as we are getting a good revenue from the local market. Retaining the employees is pretty easy one if you believe them if you provide them their salary on time with good accommodation along with few chances to grow with the organization. As always there are excess supply over demand in the market due the more number of printing presses and to overcome this situation we have got only one choice, that is to get the international market. The trends has changed over these 20 years, earlier we did not have any fully automatic machines and there were lot of manual intervention but nowadays with many competitors around the market we could easily get fully automatic machines at cheaper price.”

Signing off, Ajith Kumar advices the printers, “The printing press should work with open eyes, should be practical, confident with the customer, be strict on time delivery, good price and service with all these combinations we can attain success.”