Indian entrepreneur Naresh Gulati vows to change the face of printing as he buys up premiere Melbourne company Print Bound. Gulati, CEO of BPO Intelligence, has set his sights on building a national printing empire under the Print Bound banner, claiming to bring offshore manufacturing back into Australia and offering unprecedented technology and services to the local industry.
Print Bound has been a Melbourne staple for nearly two decades, since it was set up by friends Mauro Mattarucco and Mark Tomasini. Building up a strong offset offering around a twelve-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 102, the business branched out over the years into design and illustration, web and photography, as well as warehousing and point-of-sales services. Less than a year after snapping up Big Print Typo last May, Gulati felt there was a natural synergy between the Print Bound and his digitally focused BPO Print division.
- Bound to change the face of printing - Naresh Gulati
“BPO has been doing offshore printing for education centres, and over the last few years we have launched new onshore service. A large amount of the work is offset, and while BPO Print has been strong in digital it wasn’t as grounded in offset," said Gulati.
Under Gulati, BPO Intelligence has traditionally serviced the the education printing market, handling accounts with a range of establishments including University of Technology Sydney, Charles Sturt University, Melbourne Business School, Monash University and RMIT University. Gulati claims that internationally BPO holds 85% of the education market share, and the investment in Print Bound will not only bring a large slab of work back into Australia, but will also open them up into new verticals.
Gulati tell Print21 that, "Print Bound's capacity and capabilities are amazing and the infrastructure is state-of-the-art. It's helping us to bring more and more work onshore. Now we own the offset side of the business we will be even more competitive and that should help us get a good share of the domestic market as well."
Both Print Bound and the merging BPO Print division will keep their present sites to be run under the banners Print Bound Offset and Print Bound Digital, respectively. Tipped to triple the business's capacity, Gulati insists that this is just beginning of his larger plans to revolutionise the printing industry in Australia. As well as working to bring manufacturing back on-shore, he is set on expanding the Print Bound name to establish a presence in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide over the next 24 months.
"The face of printing is going to change, and Print Bound is going play a big part in that. We are repositioning. Print Bound is not a printing company, it's a communication company, and that's what we're going to be offering to our customers," he says.
Gulati hints at exciting developments for the new Print Bound over the next six months. He claims to already have invested in new presses, with a new A2 up and running in March. He has also teased a second highly-customised offset press, about which he is staying tight-lipped, except to say that when it lands it will be the only one of its kind in the country.
From his humble beginnings selling candles on the streets of Chandigarh, India, Naresh Gulati is today the founder and CEO of OCA Group, with offices in Australia, Britain, USA and India and reported to be worth over $150 million. The group holds print management business BPO Intelligence, BPO Print, software solutions platform Object Next and the overseas student recruitment and immigration business Oceanic Consulting, which has been running since 1996. Since he founded BPO Intelligence in 2008 it has won numerous Australian Business Awards, and ranked 12th fastest-growing company in Australia by BRW in 2010.
Gulati says that a major factor in his decision was the calibre of the Print Bound management team, directors Mattarucco, Tomasini and Mark Randles. All three will remain with the business and continue to oversee operation of Print Bound Offset. No further restructuring has been announced.
"The guys are great leaders, they have a strong client-base and the quality of product is second to none. That's a major focus for us, strong consistent quality," said Gulati.