The cost of printing has gone up drastically over the last 10 years. Students studying an undergraduate degree spend an average of £84.39 on printing per year.

With the rising living costs and inflation in the economy, it dawns on all students that saving money is key to living an enjoyable student life.

With this in mind, two former students, Amish Badiani and Anand Morjaria decided they wanted to do something about it. A website designed for students offering bespoke printing and binding solution, for cheaper prices than the regular high street stores or local printing shops and thus, UniDoxDirect was born, a collaborative partnership with Doxdirect Ltd.

Speaking about why they feel their company is currently needed, Mr Badiani said:

Most students do not own their own printer, as the costs of initial purchase and printing inks are high, plus they take up room, are prone to breaking down and furthermore, your friends will nag you to let them print at your cost! The majority of students print their coursework, dissertations, presentations and any other formal documents in the library, or a local printing shop. They have been known to charge up to 40p a page for colour printing, and that's before adding the cost of binding and finishing your documents!

As an example, my final year at university consisted of a dissertation, which was around 100 pages, and 15% of the final grade was presentation. This made it important for the document to not only be written in a fine manner, but to look presentable. As there was no alternative at the time, I had to resort to getting it printed and bound at high street retailer Staples, who charged £45 for 2 copies, with a simple binding mechanism. However, if UniDoxDirect was around, I could have had that document delivered for half the price, and finished in a glossy book format, achieving top presentation marks!

On Competition:

There are one or two other companies out there offering a similar service, but none which can offer the quality or range of products we offer. As a student myself, I understood that the costs of printing were high, it was a stone age system of walking to the shops, standing in queues and all the finished documents looked the same, I.e same binding, same covers and same finishes.

On Marketing:

With a certain amount of marks being given to presentation these days, we thought it important that you can design the cover, and have different types of binding, including saddle stitch, book bound, spiral, etc.. In this manner, your finished documents instantly impress when you or the examiner picks them up, and you instantly have that edge over other students. All that said, even if you go for the bog standard offered by local printing shops, you still get a reasonable saving on your printing budget for the year!

On Technology:

We have also recently implemented upgrades to the system, whereby if a student wants their lecture notes for a particular module printed, they can submit them to us, and we can ring bind them, with a personalized cover and personalised tabs within the ring binder, offering a solution to wasteful and lost materials!

The Future:

I think the future will involve an online storage facility, like a database, saving your preferences in terms of covers and personalisation of documents, having the ability to emboss the logo of your university on the cover, etc..

Even direct delivery and submission of documents from the website to the university, making the student's life less worrisome, as once they finish working, all they do is click print on UniDox, and their document is printed and submitted to their university prior to the deadline!

The future may also involve getting universities to print their course materials from us and syllabuses/programmes etc..