Shree Ajanta Commercial Co. Commemorates 50 Years of ‘Success’
31 January 2022: Celebrating its golden jubilee in the beginning of 2022 Mumbai based Shree Ajanta Commercial Company, is flying high with its 50 years’ success. Established on the auspicious day of 14th January 1972 (Makara Sankranti), the company’s NextGen head Niren Mehta is in a celebratory mood, thanking all his valuable customers, principals, suppliers and well-wishers in the printing industry.
Niren joined the family business in 1995 and has taken forward the legacy of his father late Bhupendra P. Mehta who managed it till 2005. Today the company is witnessing a growth of 12 to 15% CAGR and has emerged strongly as a supplier, mainly because of their strategy to ‘change according to the changing times and evolve,’ and customer-oriented attitudes.
The company has never changed its business location from Princess Street, the heart of old Mumbai. “Since 1972, our business has been run under the same name and from the same place,” says Niren Mehta. Over the years, it kept on adding new products into its portfolio, now catering to screen, offset, textile printing sectors. The company is a leading supplier of a wide range of printing materials and machines, housed in their 800 sq. ft. warehouse, in addition to their retail outlet at Princess Street.
They represent DIC, Huber Group/Colors for UV varnishes, SkyScreen International for their Nittoku Mesh and Ulano chemicals, Cheran for their textile printers and dryers. The company has over 175 regular customers in Mumbai, Goa, Maharashtra and some other parts of India. They are the authorised distributor of J. N. Arora & Co. for their wide range of products, covering Mumbai, the rest of Maharashtra and Goa. The company is currently going in a big way in the supply of pigment testing medium from DIC. Keeping pace with the Digital Age, the company has recently added DTF into their portfolio in addition to OKI transfer printing machine; Siser HTV. They also offer special ink matching services to printers engaged in export jobs.
Talking about the market situation after COVID-19, Niren Mehta says, commercial screen printing has affected a lot whereas industrial, value addition (UV) and textile printing sectors are doing well. As regards their revenue basket, the textile sector is contributing more as there is a wide range of products, right from textile printing machines to HTV and DTF.
“In textiles segment, the market is shifting from plastisol inks to Water base. A lot of new garment decoration techniques are also being adopted. One of the major trends that are threatening the very existence of screen printing job workers is that offset presses are now setting up inhouse screen printing units; garment manufacturers are also preferring to have in-house digital and screen printing units, thus bypassing the job workers. So, change is imminent and printers need to evolve according to the changing times, else exit the market. It applies to suppliers like us as well. We cannot stick to only traditional printing materials. We have to have a wide range of products and even if customers ask for a product that we do not have, we have to source and supply them.”
Niren Mehta asserts, “For survival, we have to understand customers’ needs and keep a happy relationship with them and also with our principals. I keep learning about new techniques and products. Our company is surviving only because of one single motto of my father: ‘Honesty, sincerity, service to our customers. Although online buying and selling are taking place, yet customers prefer the personal touch.”
“COVID-19 impact was there initially, but as the essential products sector was allowed to operate, the situation started becoming normal. We stood by our customers; by our principals and they stood by us. I think it is ‘give and take’ that matters during such a difficult situation. As our Prime Minister says, ‘Sabka saat sabka Vikas,’ we have to move ahead together as one industry.”
Niren adds, “Not that all customers are safe to deal with. Some customers pay upfront, some pay after 30 or 60 days and of course, some simply delay payments. We have to manage the whole show of running the business wherein we have to first invest in our good customers and expect return after some period, that includes credit period. During the pandemic, we faced certain losses as customers closed down their business and some simply vanished; such defaults became our ‘bad debt.’ It is a part and parcel of the business.”
He concludes “We are grateful to all our loyal customers across India, principals, mentors, well-wishers and industry friends, because of whom we completed a full 50 years. We are also thankful for our sub-dealers in Mumbai and other places who stood by us.”
nirenm@rediffmail.com / 93222 27525
