Farewell to flex

One of my friends here in Bhopal closed down his business this week. For the last six years he ran a flex print shop for large hoardings and banners. Since his was one of the first printing houses in Bhopal for large format printing, he did very well. Before he started, people had to go all the way to Indore or Delhi for this type of printing and it was a real nuisance. I used to give him the flex work that came my way. But the monopoly is over and now there’s a flex printing shop in almost every market. Customers don’t give the rates anymore that they used to jump over earlier because there’s always someone else down the street willing to do the same work for a cheaper price. The printing machines which earlier used to cost more than a million Rupees are easily available for less than half that. Excellent reconditioned machines are also available from Delhi and Mumbai markets even cheaper. And as a result, the profit margins have come down drastically and a machine owner today must print out at least 1500-2000 square feet of flex just to break even on a daily basis. With the customers diluted over tens of printing houses, its near impossible to meet this figure regularly. So he finally succumbed and sold off his much loved Mutho.
Two things sell well here, religion and politics. The printing machine was his venture for livelihood through politics since his primary clients were political parties who regularly gave him work. At one time, most of the large hoardings of politicians and political statements from various parties were from his machine.
Now he’s starting a career earning from religion. He’s set up shop with India’s highest end astrological software and is planning to make birth-charts, gem-charts, prediction-charts match-making, etc for clients. Astrology is BIG business in India but unfortunately computers have not really made much headway in this field. Most people still go to their official family astrologer or pundit for solutions through astrology. While most pundits are well versed in Sanskrit, the official language for astrological calculations, most of them are not very well versed in computers. And even though many of the software are available in Hindi and Sanskrit, the common operating system is still in English. That creates a bottleneck for many of the senior astrologers who prefer doing all the calculations by hand. This guy is planning to change that by dazzling his client with the accuracy and the scope of computer generated charts. As with any other product, you need some new gimmick to sell the material at the price you want and stay one step ahead of the competition. You can’t really beat a computer for computational accuracy and he is planning to cash in on it and leave the pundits to do all the major forecasting, a mutually beneficial arrangement. Sort of a mix of the best of both worlds. Tomorrow morning is the inauguration of his establishment. He’s invited many astrological experts and priests of Bhopal and is planning a grand ceremony.
I hope he finds the same level of success that he initially found with flex printing. PC Sir, we will miss you. Best of luck from all of us for your new venture.