The origin of India’s topmost Stationery and Paper brand is interwoven with the history of Sundaram. Sowing a tiny seed in the Indian soil, who knew the roots of Sundaram will widespread in the soil of other countries. They follow a philosophy that says ‘education is the strength of our nation and we will always stand by it’. With this in mind, their journey has been an inspirational one!
Initiation of Sundaram Multi Pap Ltd
With a humble thought of ‘improving the quality of student life’ of the communities we serve in, Amrutbhai P. Shah and Shantilal P. Shah incorporated Sundaram Multi Pap Ltd on March 13, 1995 as a public limited company and obtained a business commencement certification on April 10, 1995. Then, the company was headquartered in Mumbai where all the major operations took place. During this time, the company took over the partnership firm namely Starline Industries who was engaged in the manufacturing of exercise notebooks, account books and other paper stationery products with its assets bank liabilities and business and the said promoters were the partners of this partnership firm. The company made their maiden public offer of 1.8 million equity shares of Rs 10 each for cash at par aggregating to Rs. 18 million on February 23, 1996. Their equity shares were listed in Pune and Ahmedabad Stock Exchanges.
Technological Advancements
In the initial period of 1995, the company had a capacity of 5 tons per day with the conversion of paper into paper stationery which was increased to 20 tons per day during the year 1998 with the addition of two German-made machines. They further increased the capacity to 50 tons per day during the year 2001 with the addition of one more unit and to 60 tons per day during the year 2003 with the addition of one more unit. During the year 2008-09 the company finalized their plan to market the eco-friendly copier paper in India under the brand name of ‘Mr Green’ which was launched in September 2009 with a brand slogan ‘Go Green With Mr Green’. This was their bit towards safeguarding the environment.
Innovative Educational Advancements by Sundaram Edusys Pvt Ltd
During the year 2009, the company owned a sole subsidiary in the name and style of ‘Sundaram Edusys Pvt Ltd’. Through their subsidiary, they came out with the innovative educational content for Grades 8, 9 and 10 of Maharashtra S.S.C Board for all subjects except Marathi and English subject languages. This educational content is developed under the brand name ‘E Class’ and has been successfully marketed to schools, coaching classes and individual students. During those expansion years in 2009-10, the company went on to grow their manufacturing facilities at Palghar by multiplying the current capacity to 120 tons per day with the conversion of paper into paper stationery. They also undertook the development of educational content for 1 to 7 standard students in Marathi and English and further developed educational content for students of S.S.C Board of other States.
The Expansion Years
The company’s equity shares were listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd (BSE) and National Stock Exchange Ltd (NSE) with effect from March 12, 2010 and June 2, 2010 respectively. During the year 2010-11, the company bought new land for the construction of the plant at Palghar. This plant was built with a fully automatic production line for exercise books. The company further installed two or more such fully automatic production line of the exercise books. Presently, this plant is the largest paper manufacturing plant in Asia.
The Growth Years
Furthermore, the existing old units at Palghar plants were renovated where full-fledged operations for the stationery edition ‘Back to School’ were initiated in 2012. During the year, the company completed the up-gradation of the machine at the paper mill at Nagpur with a set up of a new modern machine for the commercial production of stationery products. In April 2011, the company expanded ‘E Class’ to cover the syllabus of Grades 1 to 10 in Maharashtra for English, Marathi and semi-English medium schools after receiving an overwhelming response from a large number of coaching classes, schools and individual students from major cities as well as interiors of Maharashtra.
Establishment of E-class Education System Pvt Ltd
The name of the company’s sole subsidiary was changed from Sundaram Edusys Pvt Ltd to E-class Education System Pvt Ltd with effect from December 15, 2011. The subsidiary company converted into a public limited company and the name was changed to E-class Education System Ltd with effect from December 28, 2011. In January 2011, E-class Education System Ltd launched their new Tablet PC ‘e-class tablet’. The tablet PC has the entire syllabus of a selected standard in a video format which has various animations, audios and visuals to make learning very interesting.
A Global Enterprise
Sundaram Multi Pap Ltd is one of the leading companies in the notebook industry. The company designs, manufactures and markets paper stationery products like exercise notebooks, long books, note pads, scrapbooks, drawing books, graph books – for students of all ages as well as office/ corporate stationery products and printing writing and packaging paper. They have over 200 varieties of paper stationery products under the brand ‘Sundaram’ which are very popular among the student communities and have a very prominent reputation in the market for its top-graded quality and durability. With a vision as big as the universe, they are now one of the major Stationery suppliers in the global market of the US, Africa and Canada.
Sundaram Group employs many of India’s finest professionals where they are strengthened by a culture of ethics and integrity. They say you can be victorious with certain virtues in life – Integrity, Responsibility and Unity. Yes, that’s what Sundaram did – they lead the group with integrity and take the responsibility of leading the team with the spirit of unity. With sheer hard work and determination, they achieved excellence and became the pioneers of the Stationery and Paper industry.