Ipp Services, Training and Research Private Limited (IppStar) is a part of the IPP Group, which publishes two trade magazines, namely Indian Printer and Publisher published from 1979 and Packaging South Asia first published in 2007. Although the IppGroup’s consultancy work began in 1979, its first conferences was held in 1994, and its research activities began in 1999, IppStar was founded in 2001.
The idea of having a separate company was to separate the publising activity from what we have always called ‘ethical’ consultancy, and ‘ethical’ research. Both of these activities have never engaged in lead generation or selling anything. Moreover, since the industry associations have not done much in the way of research, or training, or standards practices, it was felt that given the opportunity to contribute to such an activity, the industry would respond.
Thus, IppStar is a knowledge organization, committed to supporting the Indian printing, packaging and publishing verticals. IppStar specializes in offering ethical consultancy and research, training, and education solutions to remove the bottlenecks that a fragmented industry faces. It seeks to alleviate some of the constraints such as lack of data that hinder the structured growth of the printing, publishing, and packaging industries in India.
The IPP Group has provided ethical consultancy services since 1979 and has been holding seminars and conferences for 25 years since 1994. The purpose of creating IppStar was to take forward the company’s consultancy, conferences, and research work. At the time, there was no organization in India, such as Fogra, UGRA, and GATF, and IppStar decided that it was necessary to have real data and primary research for the industry to enter the 21st century. The situation is just as true today for most parts of the commercial printing and packaging industry although the newspaper publishing industry does have some structured data under the entertainment and media category.
To date, IppStar has conducted more than 20 research projects for leading multinational manufacturers, distributors, and converters, 19 consultancy projects for quality control of print, equity investments, mergers, and acquisitions, 25 conferences and roundtables, and training programs. It latest major research project was to enumerate and understand the ‘Book Publishing and Industry in India and Bangladesh’ in 2018-19. Some of the insights from this research will be shared with publishing professionals in a session at the Jaipur Book Mark on 23 January 2020.
As a knowledge company committed to the print, publishing and packaging domains, IppStar works relentlessly to address the problems of the graphic arts community in India and to create a better working environment for people directly or indirectly associated with the graphics arts community. The company’s more than four decades of hands-on experience in the Indian print industry has helped it to understand the complexity of the graphic arts community and the changes that technology brings.
With the support of the industry, IppStar wants to create awareness in the print, packaging, and publishing industries of needs that are beyond the day-to-day commercial focus of businesses. IppStar believes that the middle and long-term focus needs to be on how to continually improve the human resource and its skill sets, quality standards, and industry data. It is our mission to get the industry to collectively support us in our effort to help it achieve these goals.
