EskoArtwork announces today the opening of a fully-owned subsidiary and Global Resource Centre in India to support collaborative software and systems integration projects around the world, and to provide enhanced service to its rapidly expanding customer base within the booming Indian packaging, printing and publishing market. This new development underlines the continuing success of the international growth strategy that EskoArtwork has been pursuing since the merger of Esko and Artwork Systems in August 2007.

Global market coverage

The subsidiary will be led by Dinesh Chandra, who joined EskoArtwork in 1996 and has developed the company’s Indian operations since 2000. Mr Chandra comments: “The opening of the Global Resources Centre in Bangalore reinforces EskoArtwork’s global market coverage, complementing the resources we have already deployed in Europe, North America and the Far East.” The main focus of the newly established Global Resource Centre will be to support sophisticated systems integration projects, currently originating mainly in Europe and North America. Mr Chandra adds: “Unlike many other companies, EskoArtwork is not moving low-skill jobs to India. On the contrary, we are building a completely new business model around an enhanced service offering. We have chosen to base our new Global Resources Centre in one of the world’s fastest developing pre-production and IT market clusters. EskoArtwork has more and more collaborative software, systems integration and workflow management projects in the pipeline and we need access to top talent.”

EskoArtwork’s CEO Carsten Knudsen adds: “The opening of this new Global Resource Centre underlines EskoArtwork’s strategic evolution as an international services-led company. It enables us to bring added value to collaborative software and integration projects for customers around the world. We are deploying additional support and service activities to Bangalore for two reasons: first, because locating in Bangalore enables us to draw on a pool of world-class IT skills and technical support talent and second, because India itself offers huge market potential.”

Bangalore, known as the Indian subcontinent’s “Silicon Valley” is India’s fifth largest city and accounts for a third of the country’s IT industry revenues. It is the corporate HQ for home-grown IT giants, as well as regional HQ for dozens of US, Japanese and European high-tech companies.

Responsive service and customer care

EskoArtwork customers around the world will now benefit from the Global Resource Centre’s CAD standard development and systems integration support, specifically on MIS integration projects. “These services are already helping our customers to raise productivity, reduce time-to-market, lower costs and expand their business,” says Mr. Chandra. “Now we can easily scale up to meet their evolving requirements.”

“We have a highly experienced management team under Dinesh Chandra and we will recruit new talent as required. Together, this team will further build EskoArtwork’s reputation for service excellence, collaborative innovation and highly responsive customer care,” adds Mr Knudsen.

Indian market also offers huge opportunities

EskoArtwork has been present in Bangalore for twelve years but has seen its business in India expand exponentially, particularly since Esko-Graphics and Artwork Systems joined forces in August 2007. Esko was already the preferred pre-production solution provider for the print and packaging industry in India. India's packaging industry is currently worth US$22.2 billion and is growing at an average annual rate of 15%, more than twice the global average.[1] Yet domestic packaging consumption per capita is still just US$15 compared with a global average of US$100, while the Indian retail industry has been forecast to grow significantly over the coming years. EskoArtwork therefore sees huge opportunities for the sector.