A printing and packaging house in Kolkata, 43 years in operation

History

Fotoset began in 1983 as a small pre-press and printing operation in central Kolkata, serving the city's exporters at a time when artwork was cut and pasted by hand and colour was separated on camera. The trade changed several times over the following decades: from camera to scanner, from film to computer-to-plate, from single-colour to multi-colour sheet-fed offset. Fotoset added each capability rather than sub-contracting it.

The direction of the business was set by its customers. Kolkata is a centre for leather, for gloves and safety wear, for footwear, for tea and for garment export. Those industries do not need advertising work. They need printed matter that carries specifications, standards marks, barcodes and instructions, produced to a fixed date and repeatable the next season. Fotoset built the plant around that requirement.

Today the largest part of the plant's output is export-grade printed packaging and tagging for industrial leather gloves, safety wear and personal protective equipment, with substantial work in footwear, garments, tea and food. Printed matter produced in Kolkata by Fotoset reaches retail in Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and New Zealand through Indian manufacturers and through brands who source from India and specify the printer directly.

Ownership and how the company is run

Santanu Roy is the owner and Chief Executive Officer. Enquiries, specifications and problems reach him directly, including on WhatsApp at +91 93310 37290. There is no account management layer between a buyer and the person who can commit the press.

For an exporter working to a shipment date, that is the practical difference. A late artwork change, a size break that has moved, or a carton quantity that has been revised can be settled in one message rather than in a chain of emails between three departments.

The in-house model

Everything is produced in-house: photography, design and artwork, colour scanning, offset printing, lamination and silkscreen printing, and all the finishing operations that follow. This single-vendor capability is the primary reason customers stay with Fotoset, and it is worth being precise about why it matters rather than treating it as a slogan.

• A sheet that never leaves the building cannot be damaged, mislaid or delayed in transit between a printer, a laminator and a screen shop.
• A colour or register fault is found by the people who printed it, while the plates are still on the press and the job can be re-run rather than argued about.
• A combination specification — an offset base with a silkscreen opaque white or a metallic pass — is scheduled as one job rather than queued twice in two factories.
• One purchase order covers the finished item, delivered punched, eyeletted, counted and packed for the packing line.
• One plant is accountable. There is no gap between suppliers for a fault to fall into.

What Fotoset is not

Fotoset is not a design agency, a creative studio or a photography studio. Photography and artwork exist here as production steps in a printing plant: product shots for a catalogue, a header card image, a die line, a multi-language typesetting job. The output of the business is printed and finished packaging.

Working with Fotoset

Indian exporters usually work from a specification and a sample, with GST invoicing and collection or delivery in Kolkata. Overseas brands usually specify Fotoset in their packaging instruction and have the printed matter delivered to a nominated Indian manufacturer for packing. Both routes are normal here and both are described in detail on the pages for Indian exporters and overseas brands.