Remains unaffected by the Covid-19 pandemic

After many date changes, ProPak India 2021 finally took place from 20 to 22 October in Pragati Maidan in New Delhi and experienced good footfalls throughout the event. The crowd levels were unexpected as Covid-19 is still having an impact and many visitors are still avoiding large gatherings and the exhibitions that have begun.

The three day Propack exhibition helped us to understand the breadth of the packaging industry. There is a hunger for technology, change, and information that made us realize that the industry needs to keep creating awareness on many topics. The continuous sharing of knowledge and experience of both the suppliers and the customers is needed to build back the planned growth of the industry and economy.

While we were there throughout the three days of the event we interacted with many exhibitors and on the last day, Control Print at their stand to discuss their experience of ProPak India.

At the Control Print stand, we met with Heena Mistry, the company’s marketing coordinator for events. On display was the company’s industrial printer for coding and marking.

The impression we got at the stand was that even though the footfall in the event was not yet as large as in Indian industry shows before the Covid-19 pandemic, the visitors who did come lead to very genuine leads. Mistry said, “Whatever leads we got are very genuine. Since this is the first exhibition after the Covid-19 pandemic, I think people are still scared, but they are coming out. The pandemic has not affected our company at all. In fact, our company started a new initiative, where we manufactured surgical masks during the pandemic, we were not sitting idle.”

The Covid-19 pandemic led to the country-wide lockdown on 25 March 2020. It will be two years tomorrow as I write this. What have we learned in this time? Maybe the meaning of resilience since small companies like us have had to rely on our resources and the forbearance of our employees as we have struggled to produce our trade platforms.

The print and packaging industries have been fortunate, although the commercial printing industry is still to recover. We have learned more about the digital transformation that affects commercial printing and packaging. Ultimately digital will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future.

Web analytics show that we now have readership in North America and Europe amongst the 90 countries where our five platforms reach. Our traffic which more than doubled in 2020, has at times gone up by another 50% in 2021. And advertising which had fallen to pieces in 2020 and 2021, has started its return since January 2022.

As the economy approaches real growth with unevenness and shortages a given, we are looking forward to the PrintPack India exhibition in Greater Noida. We are again appointed to produce the Show Daily on all five days of the show from 26 to 30 May 2022.

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