Kartasi stamps mark on stationery business with diversification

Nairobi-based entrepreneur Narendra Shah started a company to sell exercise books in the 1970s.

Forty four years on, his legacy has grown even bigger, securing him a position among the big boys in the industry — with a wide range of stationeries under the Kartasi brand.

Do the names Sarit Centre or TBC (Text Book Centre) ring a bell? The two, together with Kartasi are owned by the same family. Kartasi is coined from Kiswahili word karatasi meaning paper.

The company’s chief operating officer, Arvind Badrinarayanan, 36, told the Business Daily that they have braved the Internet shift to stay afloat.

Mr Badrinarayanan is only a year old at the firm based in Nairobi’s Industrial Area but the conviction he speaks with shows a brave young man ready to weather the storm to maintain such a legacy.

He is a graduate of a top UK university - Cranfield School of Management. His appointment came as part of the company’s expansion strategy as it was previously solely run by the family.

The company, which started with an old binding machine that failed to work for the first nine months of operation, has a turnover of over Sh1 billion. Mr Shah together with his first four employees got their hands dirty to fix it. Kartasi now has 450 staff.

From what was an uncertain start, the brand has won recognition not only from Kenyans who have passed through the 8-4-4 system but also neighbouring countries.

They supply to African countries like Rwanda, Malawi and DRC Congo.
“What has made us stay strong in this business is the willingness to diversify and change with the trends,” said Mr Badrinarayanan.

“A good example is when we stopped the production of envelopes and inspirational notebooks mostly used by the ladies to write love letters. We sold the machinery 15 years ago. The Internet of things is with us and since it was no longer viable we have moved on to other things.”

From only producing exercise books, the stationer has diversified to other products under different brand names like Pilot which makes pens, pencils, art pencils.

Bantex produces fine art material like canvas, water paints and Camlin also does water pencils. Besides they also manufacture masking tapes and adhesive labels for packaging, spring and box files (at Sh350), drawing books, notebooks, diaries and car log books.

Flagship

“Exercise books are our flagship products and we also do branding for institutions and corporates… we have branded for the likes of Aga Khan Group of Schools, Hillcrest Schools, Braebrun Group of Schools.”

To satisfy the regional market, they operate on a 24-hour basis apart from weekends.

Their warehouses alone nestles on 40,000 square feet with a production of 40 tonnes of paper a day, translating to over 1.2 million kilogrammes of paper products a month.

To produce quality products, Mr Badrinarayanan said they put the welfare of workers before everything else.

He says continuous improvement of employees through training, annual appraisal and rewarding best minds has aided them to retain the best.

“We also ensure that quality assurance is done during and not after production to minimise wastage,” said Mr Badrinarayanan.
He adds that the company vets their staff to identify skills that would build a solid team.

They however urge the government to invest and protect the local industry, ensuring that high standards are maintained while still being cost efficient through public private partnership.

Ninety five per cent of their raw materials, mostly paper and plastic, are imported from India, Russia, Europe and Far East.

They are unsure of what the revival of Webuye’s Panpaper mills means to their business since even when it was operational “the quality and quantity could not satisfy their demand”.

“We are faced with a threat from cheap quality imports that lowers industry standards and this is where the government needs to come in even if it means duties going up.

“I wonder why someone would import raw materials from the same source and produce substandard stuff,” he said.