Maatti Design stands apart with the wide range of design services it offers, and its strict focus on quality

Since the time he began working in 1972 for Rs 250 a month, Mr. Ramesh Sehdev has seen it all-from sleeplessly working two jobs to make ends meet, to moving to another city and doing without one meal a day for over a year, to hitching rides from truckwallahs in the wee hours to make it to work by 6 in the morning, to being the President and CEO of a company… to starting his own company over six years ago. His long and eventful career has spanned administrative and production roles in multiple industries, including soft drinks, oil, liquor, and glass. Although the journey has not been easy, with his rock solid determination and diverse experience, Mr. Sehdev quickly became sought after wherever he went.

A man who has always had a creative streak (he enjoys painting and writing, and has written a few Hindi novels and sold some of his paintings during a lone stint in Kolkata), today Mr. Sehdev is also the head of a family of highly accomplished individuals. Clearly proud of his children’s achievements, he talks with great enthusiasm about them: both his sons, Kunal and Vaibhav, are graduates of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), while his daughter, Mansi, is a reputed sports journalist.

In 2005, Mr. Sehdev’s decades of experience culminated in his starting his own design house along with Kunal. While Maatti Design was born through Kunal’s initiative, each of Mr. Sehdev’s children plays a vital role in the functioning of the organization today. Vaibhav-who has been to Heidelberg’s Print Media Academy in Chennai for a month’s training, and will soon be going to Germany to learn more about printing-heads production at the Sehdevs’ factory in Bahadurgarh. Kunal handles the design services, while Mansi handles the web design services and PR.

Ramesh Sehdev, Maattii Design

The Birth of Maatti Design
Maatti began in a 70 sq. yard flat in Rajouri Garden in Delhi, with an investment of Rs. 2 lakh. The company started out with only one motto: to produce the best design jobs in the country. Today, its services extend across the design/printing value chain, and cover product design, graphic design, website and software design, printing and packaging, and photography. Over the last few years, with many businesses running parallely, the Sehdev family has finally begun to connect all the pieces together to come up with a viable business model.
Maatti’s strength is design, which is something not everyone has. “We have a very strong prepress team,” says Mr. Sehdev. “Plus, I have very good knowledge of printing, even though I am not a qualified printer. In my view, if you can do prepress very well, 80% of your print job is over.”

Maatti began in a 70 sq. yard flat in Rajouri Garden in Delhi, with an investment of Rs. 2 lakh. The company started out with only one motto: to produce the best design jobs in the country. Today, its services extend across the design/printing value chain, and cover product design, graphic design, website and software design, printing and packaging, and photography. Over the last few years, with many businesses running parallely, the Sehdev family has finally begun to connect all the pieces together to come up with a viable business model.
Maatti’s strength is design, which is something not everyone has. “We have a very strong prepress team,” says Mr. Sehdev. “Plus, I have very good knowledge of printing, even though I am not a qualified printer. In my view, if you can do prepress very well, 80% of your print job is over.”
Maatti’s USP is delivering end-to-end solutions to its customers. In the process, the company also becomes the brand manager for many of its customers.

The company bought its first Heidelberg machine recently : a Speedmaster SM 74 five colour press. In addition to the SM 74, they also have a POLAR Cutting machine, and plan to add a Folder and Perfect Binder very soon. While it is a very small setup at the moment, Mr. Sehdev plans to keep adding machines at his 1-acre plot in Bahadurgarh. If all goes well, they will add another printing machine of a bigger size in the month of April or May.

Maatti does not currently offer design services to Indian clients, but offers both design and printing services to global clients. Their ultimate aim as far as printing is concerned, is to print world-class catalogues, primarily for customers in Europe and USA.

Why Heidelberg?
Mr. Sehdev had initally considered going for a different brand. “But in my son’s mind, Heidelberg is a very good name, especially in Europe. And our main aim is to export. In Germany, it’s all about Heidelberg. So one reason we decided to go for Heidelberg was its brand value.” He adds, “And now we will not shift to any other machine. We have had bad experiences with Indian machines. So for us, it is only Heidelberg. You get assurance.”

Mr. Sehdev had initally considered going for a different brand. “But in my son’s mind, Heidelberg is a very good name, especially in Europe. And our main aim is to export. In Germany, it’s all about Heidelberg. So one reason we decided to go for Heidelberg was its brand value.” He adds, “And now we will not shift to any other machine. We have had bad experiences with Indian machines. So for us, it is only Heidelberg. You get assurance.”
One major factor that influenced his decision is Heidelberg’s excellent after-sales service. According to Mr. Sehdev, Maatti has been facing some challenges with its factory being located in a remote area. Transportation of materials is a challenge, and the distance only adds to the cost. But, he says, “The best thing about Heidelberg is the effort they put in. The services they provide are excellent, there is no problem with the machine, it is running very smoothly, but still their people keep visiting. We have not complained, yet they see it as their duty to see that the machine is working well, and to support the client. In my opinion, only Heidelberg can do this!”

The Future of Print
According to Mr. Sehdev, the state of the printing industry is not very encouraging at the moment. Widespread inflation has driven up the prices of most commodities manifold, but printing rates have not changed all that much over the years.

Additionally, there is a lot of infighting in the industry. “The print industry is killing itself. I know some printers who are actually working at losses, just to be able to beat the competition’s pricing,” he says. The industry cannot sustain itself like this.

Instead of this, Mr. Sehdev advises printers to fight over quality instead of pricing-offer better quality than the competition, and then also demand the original price instead of bending over backwards to accommodate buyers’ demands.

Considering all this, how does Maatti set itself apart from the crowd? “I know that once we are known in the market, customers will see us as a brand which stands for quality,” Mr Sehdev says. “I don’t want to work with clients who are prepared to compromise on quality for the sake of a better price. We don’t want to get into the rat race-I will not lower my prices for fear of the competition, but I want people to come to me regardless, when they want the best result.”

Maatti gets jobs from its customers in Europe not because it offers cheaper rates (except maybe in the case of printing), but for its quality. Says Kunal, “We don’t even know whether we are cheap or expensive. We just work at our own rates.”

This is not to say that infrastructure is not important. “But our philosophy cannot end at infrastructure. It has to go beyond,” says Kunal. It is important to have the latest technology, but that alone does not guarantee great results, without excellent workmanship.

Big Plans
So what are the company’s future plans? The focus is now on establishing Maatti Design as a brand in India and across the world, and selling their own products. Maatti’s ultimate aim is to reach more customers from Europe and the United States.

So what are the company’s future plans? The focus is now on establishing Maatti Design as a brand in India and across the world, and selling their own products. Maatti’s ultimate aim is to reach more customers from Europe and the United States.
Says Kunal, “We might expand from printing to packaging. It is all correlated-since we are the users of our products, and we know the market, we can be the best ones to decide what needs to be the design of the packaging, the material, rates, etc. So the print factory has to grow. Also, we might just put up our own factories for various product areas.”

He adds, “We are here to make money, but we are not married to the commercials. Some of our other plans include contributing to the development of the area where the factory is. It is not a well known area, and this gives us an opportunity to serve society. We have several ideas for this. But we want to retain the natural aspect of the place. So we plan to grow trees as well-for every particular lot of printing we do, we will grow a tree. There are many more approaches to the business than just the commercial one, and these will take shape in the next six months or so.”

The future promises to be exciting for Maatti Design, and we’ll be waiting eagerly to see how things shape up!

Do you have a story to share, or wish to have the same growth and success as Maattii Design? Feel free to write to Rajendra.Prasad@heidelberg.com