SLK:a committed
soldier in Indian
newspaper army
Million and million of impressions on newsprint by coldset or heatset imprinted since the year 1971 by newspaper publishers or commercial printers in India have been possible with an active role played by none other than this now
‘silver haired’ ever smiling face instrumented by supplying sate-of-the-art web presses of more than one brands. And the person is Surender L Kulkarni popularly known as SLK.
SLK at AAN stand in
IPEX South Asia 2011, Mumbai
|
The interesting journey of this personality started professionally with The Times of India, Mumbai as an engineer in their maintenance department. Prior to joining TOI in 1963, SLK completed his electrical engineering at the age of twenty years, and declined an offer received from IBM where he secured the first position in their entrance test but with lower salary package offered than TOI. Perhaps, otherwise SLK would have been somewhere else and to fill up his role played in Indian graphic arts industry would have been shouldered by someone else.
The journey continued for SLK at TOI, until receiving an offer to go to their Delhi facility as chief engineer and take care of their printing and other operations. Looking for the opportunity to return to Mumbai, SLK joined Manubhai & Sons in 1971 who were dealing in letterpress web presses from East Germany (brand: Plamag) which were made available against rupee payment since hard currency availability was treated as a rare commodity.
The role of SLK was handling total installation work which was taking him all around the country. But again as he had just married in 1970 prior to joining Manubhai & Sons, and had small children, keeping away from family made him to resign and look for another opportunity with an ‘entrepreneurship’ concept in mind. SLK initiated to start up a printing press in 1974 as a partnership concern by installing a web press purchased from Manubhai itself. Nevertheless, this activity he never enjoyed and thus withdrew himself and eventually joined Indian Express, Mumbai as chief engineer to take care of total maintenance.
Then came an interesting turning point, when SLK prepared himself in marketing of web presses and proposed his willingness to the representatives of ‘Harris’ who were travelling to India and trying to sell their machines amongst newspaper publishers. Meanwhile, the import licensing procedures were made easier under OGL categories. Fortunately, it clicked well and SLK was offered the distributorship on much liberal terms. As a distributor, SLK sold first machine to Anand Viketan and earned a good commision which set him up firmly in this new venture. Having in-depth understanding of the Indian market, SLK continued his journey selling more than 5-6 machines per year and achieved a mark of 100+ machines during 15 years. However, during the period 1993-95, the number of orders came down in newspaper segment as Indian manufacturers came out with new improved versions of web presses, but SLK could continue with heat set commercial segment.
It is also well known that, Harris Web came under the ownership of leading sheet fed press manufacturer Heidelberg and finally in the year 2004, Goss acquired this web division from Heidelberg. At that time, Goss had their own distributor in India, and they suggested SL Kulkarni & Company to join hands with their existing distributor Cyril Graphics. Accepting the proposal, finally both the companies were merged to become ‘SL Kulkarni Cyril Graphics Pvt Ltd’ in the year 2005.
Enjoying his life happily with two sons (settled in US), three grandsons one grand daughter, managing director of ‘SL Kulkarni Cyril Graphics, Surendra L Kulkarni continues his mission of contributing to Indian print industry with much dedicated spirit.
