This office boy started up with Rs 1k, now owns a company worth Rs 3 Cr
Muthukumar graduated with a physics degree in 1992. Unable to find a job that matched his qualification, he joined a printing press as an office boy. Within a short span of time, he learnt a lot about entrepreneurship and running a printing press.
After six months, he quit the job and started a printing press of his own — Printfaast — with an investment of just Rs 1,000. In his words,
“I learnt screen printing and started a printing press while staying at my sister’s house. Initially, I only invested Rs 1,000 in it. It was very difficult for the first three years, with many challenges."
Muthukumar viewed every hurdle in his path as a learning experience and, soon enough, found himself on the road to success. He has seen enormous growth in the 20 years since.
He has expanded to include digital designing and offset printing as part of the services offered and now his company is worth more than Rs 3 crore. Talking about the reason behind his success, he said,
"I keep updating myself to keep up with the changing times. Be it the software, technology, or the printing tools used, I adopt new technologies when they are required."
Printfaast, which provides diaries, planners, calendars, digital designing, and logo designing services, among other things, also introduced online services in 2014. Muthukumar is not interested only in success; he is also environment-friendly. Realising dates are a major reason why diaries have a shelf life, he did away with them. In his words,
"As diaries carry dates, 40–60 percent of them go unused, according to a research. It takes 4–6 trees to make one diary. So in order to not waste too many trees for pages that go unused, we make diaries without dates."
Muthukumar plans to expand his business by employing more than 300 people and increasing the company's net worth to Rs 300 crore in the near future.
Read this in Tamil.
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