It all began in 1952 when Mr.Sanat M. Shah took over his father’s business Manubhai Sons & Company. With his exemplary vision, Mr.Sanat M.Shah a young entrepreneur decided to deal in the trading of printing machinery and its allied products, a growing industry at the time. The company soon grew from its humble roots to a global player and its enterprising history, in brief, is traced below.
Manubhai Sons & Company under the direction of Mr.Sanat Shah established close contacts with East European countries viz. German Democratic Republic (GDR), Czechoslovakia and Russia and took up the agency for the sale of various printing machines in India. While selling various commercial and pre-press equipments from Czechoslovakia and Russia, Manubhai Sons & Company also took up the challenge of selling hi-tech newspaper rotary machines manufactured by Plamag Plauen. The company thus actively entered into the business of selling of newspaper machines in the year 1958-59 including installations, and followed it up with strong after sales services. Manubhai Sons & Company sold almost 200 printing units between the years 1960-70 to almost every newspaper in India.
In the ensuing years, due to the extreme foreign exchange shortage in India, severe restrictions were placed on imports. This severely affected the imports of machinery to India. Having built a large network in India in sales and services it was not possible to survive unless machines were available. In order to buck the trend and make machines available in the local market, Manubhai Sons & Company entered into a license agreement, the first ever in India, with an East German company for production of printing machines locally in India. This was also the first ever venture in public enterprise for the production of printing machines in India under collaboration with Polygraph Export Import GDR.
Thus in 1970 emerged, Maschinenfabrik Polygraph (India) Ltd. for production of the most popular Web Offset machines RO-62 and OM-II Letter Press. Almost more than 200 printing units of RO-62 were sold and also exported to many East European countries.
One of the conditions of the collaboration agreement was strictly for production of machines by Maschinefabrik Polygraph (India) Ltd. Sales would continue to be looked after by Manubhai Sons & Company due to the longstanding market knowledge and customer profile established since the company’s inception. In due course and as a matter of business expansion Manubhai Sons & Company added another feather to its cap by entering into a technical & financial collaboration under a joint venture called Plamag Plauen India Ltd. now merged under Manugraph India Ltd. as Unit II With this phenomenal success and increase in sales worldwide, the company required to expand its operations to assist with the sales & marketing activities and therefore Multigraph Machinery Company Pvt. Ltd. was established in 1991 as an associate of Manubhai Sons & Company for this purpose. Multigraph Machinery Company Pvt. Ltd. thus became a recognized export House, in handling sales across India as well as markets internationally, and it still remains the company’s core function even today.
In 1972, Maschinefabrik Polygraph (India) Ltd now Manugraph India Ltd. built a sprawling factory unit in Kolhapur, Maharashtra for the manufacture of multiple & varied press machines and Multigraph Machinery Company Pvt. Ltd. continues to be responsible for all sales activities from this bastion of the company’s growth on a non exclusive basis.
Multigraph Machinery Company Pvt. Ltd. has its head office in Mumbai, India, with branches across major Indian cities and overseas and is a trading establishment for the sale of web offset machines and its allied products worldwide.