Preeti Duggal, Director, Blue Jade Texink Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Jade Texink Pvt. Ltd. is a fast growing water-based inkjet dye ink manufacturer in India by applying state-of-art technology and equipments in producing sublimation, reactive and disperse inks for Epson, Kyocera, Konica Minolta and Spectra print heads. As a fastgrowing company focusing on textile industry, one of its mission is to help new customers to start digital textile printing with comprehensive support, including quality entry-level printers, inks and other consumption medias, pre-and posttreatment chemicals, and engineer training service. To know more about the company and its further plans for the Indian market, Apparel Views Editorial team interviewed Preeti Duggal, Director, Blue Jade Texink Pvt. Ltd.
Please tell us more about Bluejade and its journey?
Bluejade started out as a challenge. At that time the only good inks available were all being imported from Europe, Japan, Korea and China. We wanted to make inks in India of the same quality and performance. It was a difficult journey initially as Indian clients would trust a bad Chinese ink more than a good, certified Indian ink. But we were always sure of our quality and our motto of being business partners with our customers and we made it to the top. Bluejade makes only certified quality inks. We have our own in-house comprehensive lab for optical, chemical and performance testing. We test all the inks available in the market so as not only to study and create a better ink, but also to have a better understanding of the raw materials and performance of the machines.
What all products are you offering? What are the new additions to the same?
We are foremost an ink manufacturing company but since we also assist our clients 360 degrees we started selling machines and pre-post treatment chemicals. Our clients expect us to come up with new technology in ink as well as machines. And we have till date managed to maintain this trust. We bring to the platter this year; High performing GOTS certified sublimation inks. The pigment inks introduced last year have a better fastness and hand feel as we have worked on the formulation and process of manufacturing of raw materials. On the machine side we have introduced a high speed printer that prints 2,500 meter per day and another printer with capacity of 6,000 mtr per day.
What is your ink production capacity? Are you exporting it also?
We don’t import inks as it goes against all that Bluejade stands for but since we are a joint venture with a Chinese Chemical giant we do take the benefit of their expertized raw materials, production machinery and testing standard instruments.
We have a dealer system so we do not directly export but our dealers are consistently selling to neighbouring counties like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. We are also looking for a dealer in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We manufacture different types of inks for our OEMs, dealers and direct sales also a few other raw materials. So, it would be difficult to say how many metric tonne of ink we manufacture, as procedures and cycle time and product itself has many permutations. Let’s, put it this way that you could print 20,00,000 meter from the ink we manufacture as of today. Though our capacity, machinery wise is twice of this but since market is new for pigment, high speed machines, reactive, etc. we are not utilizing our capacity.
Please tell us about your sales and after sales service network?
We have dealer network spread all over India. Wherever we don’t have a dealer or agent we have our own office to support our customers. Our dealers have service engineers trained by us so that the customers always get the best after sales service and best performance from their machines and inks. Best part is that we have a system in place through CRM, training schedules, and open door policy that the dealer or OEM can get solutions, answers, updates and latest technology as super speed. The company is growing and learning from feedback and so this whole system was put in place.
We realize the importance of end customers and in the past we have had experiences of our dealers not doing right be the end customers so with this mechanism we make sure that even their grievances and issues are resolved.
What edge are you having over your competitors?
We have a tagline “All about digital textiles” that is because this is our Primary business and we are constantly working to give better and latest products. Our inks are European standards and the only certified inks selling in India currently. Our trained engineers have the best performance standards in the industry. This is a dynamic business. We directly work with print-head manufacturers to understand and implement even the upcoming technologies. This also helps us guide our customers better for the transition in the right and favourable direction. All this and the confidence of hundreds of customers is what creates a cutting edge for us.
What is the present trend in digital textile printing? What do you feel about the digital textile printing market in India?
The digital market in India is ever growing. Since we have been here from the initial times we have seen the transition of digital machines being an add on to the conventional dyeing and printing factories to now factories being full capacity digital factories wherein they are doing it all – Sublimation, reactive, pigment and disperse under one roof. This was never achievable with the conventional processes.
Today, we are seeing factories in planning stage with capacity of 1,00,000 meter/ day and more.Pigment is showing a great direction for blends in digital. The heads are more pigment friendly and the results are brighter with a smooth hand feel.Also the lead time for new styles, designs and trends is so short that digital industry has become the only solution. The possibility of colours and the gamut possible in digital is also a great benefit.
The digital designers have also matured and are now creating better designs and more appealing motifs for the end customers. The Bluejade inks are known for its fastness and better Grey tones which also helps achieve better results. Digital is better for the environment and that also puts this industry on a fast track.
What are the latest technological innovations taking place in the digital printing machinery industry?
On the machine side development is happening for faster, low maintenance, hispeed machinery. Also large sized and large capacity printers, single pass printers, Hybrid machines, are matured and already running at our customers. We are all geared up for supplying these machines and giving services in maintenance and with inks of the future like pigments, HD Sublimation, brilliant reactive inks and allied chemicals.
How do you see the investment trend in digital printing segment in next few years?
As stated, many manufacturers are planning, equipping and buying large infrastructure that has capacity to accommodate 1 to 2 Lk meter per day and competing with conventional printers but with better results, technology, gamut, finish and investment. So we will be seeing huge growth in this sector and we are already seeing this in the pipeline.
What challenges does this industry face? What do you propose to overcome them?
The challenges that we see are from the fellow machine suppliers and ink importers who are getting non tested and non-certified and inconsistent result giving inks. They ruin the ethics of the industry and the confidence of the customer but we also believe that the customer is also more aware and more educated so in the long run they realize the benefit of being with a larger and more progressive company like Bluejade.
What are Bluejade’s future plans?
Our future plans are of growth and expansion. This industry is very dynamic and so to be a pioneer we have to grow organically and be focused on better customer experience and keep doing what we do better and that is consistency and quality. Customers now understand that cheap ink will give cheap result and fetch low revenue. They know to look for quality ink for quality printing output even in domestic work and so should now focus on designing, colour planning-matching, even on value addition and create their own USPs.
We are planning a Demo Centre as a more hands on creation place. This would work as a training centre for our service and maintenance trainees. This would also work as an initial printing shop for new investors/manufacturers to assist in launching their own printing factory. We intend it to also work as a creative centre for new design research and development.
