The 15th edition of BMPA’s PS23 successfully takes place with an active participation of over 900 delegates at NCPA Mumbai.
The 15th edition of Bombay Master Printers Association (BMPA)’s flagship event Print Summit was held successfully on 16th of February at NCPA (Tata Theatre) in Mumbai. Over 900 print enthusiasts attended the event and one could literally feel the energy inside the hall.
The organising team, as always was beaming with excitement and so were the delegates. PRESSIdeas has always noticed the positive sentiment and optimism in the approach of the BMPA team in all that they do. The cooperation amongst the members and their respect for their elders/seniors in the organisation is clearly noticeable and the honour bestowed by them on Fred Poonawala who has been a protagonist in all the previous Print Summits was a testimony in itself. So was the gesture asking all the past presidents in the audience to stand up for an applause from the audience considering the time was short and the show had a jampacked itinerary. As it does happen in all organisations, it is good to change the baton over to the next generation well in time.
Coming back to PS23, the present president Mr.Amit Shah introduced the summit to the over 900 delegates, which almost filled in the huge Tata Theatre at Nariman Point, Mumbai. With the PS23 theme of ‘Own The Change’ it was evident from all the speakers that change is the only constant and one who adapts to the change would be the one who would succeed in the long run.
The day had a full day activity with presentations from Kedar Lele of HUL (Key note speaker), Sudhanshu Mani, ex- GM of ICF was a treat to watch (and hear) with his speech interspersed with apt urdu couplets. Both of them got an immense standing ovation from the entire audience.
It is a fact that at such conferences the audience is hardly interested in hearing technical presentations but then organisers need fund to run such shows and main sponsors are given time to showcase their ware – both ITC (Shailendra Singh, GM Production talking on Manufacturing Excellence: The ITC Way) and Koenig & Bauer (Sasha Fischer, Head KBA PM & Key Account Manager, Europe talking on Exceeding Print) had their presentation slots. As for the others we did hear a murmur that this time instead of stalls/stands for sponsors with provision for standees etc., there were just a couple of Digital screens with videos of about 18 seconds running on them for the visiting delegates to have a chance to see them. Undoubtedly, digital is the future.
Other speakers at the show included Ranesh Bajaj of Vinsak, who had an interactive session with Ankul Nanavaty of Unik Printers. “We don’t have to be China+1 as we already are stronger and smarter to stand alone and become India+1. Well, infrastructure in India is improving at a fast pace, and the ease of doing business has shown a big change by jumping from 170 in the year 2016 to 70 today” announced Ranesh and Ankul could not agree more. Bajaj also urged the audience to consider expanding to other countries rather than just staying within the country as he himself has done with his expansion to Middle East and Africa.
Dr Pujya Gnanavatsai Swami, was a pleasant surprise with his view for all the business people in the audience. His speech interspersed with cricketing anecdotes and clips from the Indian cricket stalwarts was a welcome change for the audience immediately after the lunch. He urged the audience to be conscious towards the need of all around us to have a life of glory. Well he proved that spirituality coupled with business sense can go well and do good in today’s business world too.
R Muthusubramaniam of Packfora had an interesting perspective on the changes that can be expected in future and what could be done to sail in a stable boat whilst being in the troubled seas. Meanwhile, Iqbal Kherodawal of Print Point in conversation with Jinesh Mehta of Unitrade FZE, presented the ‘lead The Change’ series about the tales and travails of Jinesh moving out from his comfort zone of family business to the successful managing of his own brands in the UAE while outsourcing from China and now getting back successfully into the production scene in the middle east.
Indraneel Chitale of Chitale Bandhu gave an inspiring account of their growth, a journey of over 81 years. Raveendra Joshi, the President of AIFMP while felicitating Indraneel, termed him as the ‘hightech mithaiwala’. Arunachalam Muruganantham, the Padman of India gave an inspiring speech too.
During PS23, it was announced that BMPA is working towards the creation of a print museum which is expected to evolve as a landmark in the cultural map of the city. While mentioning about it during the event, Mehul Desai from the organising team said that the Mumbai Print Museum is expected to showcase the rich printing tradition and the technological evolution of print with a special focus on print in Mumbai city and its environs.
What we made out of the very successful event is very simple explained in the quote below and was put out in the presentation by the Keynote Speaker too: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running”.
Well, keeping all the past aside (including the Covid catastrophe), let us have a good run in 2023!
