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I will break up my answer into two parts. The first set of bullet points sets out the challenges as pessimistically as possible. The subsequent set of corresponding bullet points then suggests the opportunities that these challenges translate to.The current state of personal 3D printing is in general not synergistic with the Indian consumer: Most of the traction in domestic 3D printers involves fused deposition modeling (FDM) filament printers sold in the form of kits. These require some experimentation and skill to put together, calibrate and operate. Due to limited access and training around metal machining, few retail stores for DIY mechanical hardware, and paucity of hobbyist friendly machine shops / fabricators / MakerSpaces in India, only a small percentage of Indians can manage the DIY aspect of 3D printing.Added to this, many of my generation who followed the path of higher education have been culturally discouraged from doing "haath ka kaam": Our parent's generation have always implied, or said outright, that the whole point of higher education is to not have to get our hands dirty: Leave that to the plumbers, electricians and other craftsmen who didn't have the "great opportunities in education" that we were being given. Sadly, this has left us poorly equipped to get under the hood on something like putting together 3D printers or making them work better. Hopefully the younger generation will have a better rounded out education, between "shop class" being introduced in schools, and access to the MakerSpace type set-ups cropping up in the metros.The Indian education system has always leaned towards book knowledge, learning by rote, and eventually super-specialization, thus pushing "good students" away from the multidisciplinary thinking and exploration that would lead to true innovation, in additive manufacture, as in many other fields. Net result: Innovation and technology arising from it will continue to be an import for a long time to come.The huge cost barriers to personal import of technical equipment for experimenting with a multifaceted technical area like 3D printing will constrain fresh development, if any, to businesses rather than maverick inventors. Evidently, a person working for an employer will never be as hungry, or as creative, as an independent inventor or innovator with desperation and fire in the belly. Before someone points out that customs duty on import of 3D printers into India is zero, look carefully: Between the "countervailing duty" and "cess" that are levied in lieu of customs duty, and of course the cost of international shipping, the net import barrier is pretty harsh.The typical family-run business in India is loathe to pay a premium for innovation or indigenous technology: The same businessman who would happily pay a lot of money for a German or American product, or a far smaller amount for a "Chinese clone" product, is extremely averse to spending anything more than raw material cost for something developed and manufactured in India, let alone pay a premium to license indigenous intellectual property. I've heard remarks like "Dimaag lagaane ka paisa kis khushi mein? An Indian mind can be hired for 10k a month!". Unfortunately, those small and medium businesses are the drivers for the mass adoption of, and therefore causing the hype cycle around, 3D printing as a buzz-phrase in the western world.Last but not least: The declining value of the Indian currency against the US Dollar. While the dollar rising from 45 to beyond 60 rupees has enhanced India's value as a country to outsource work to, it has correspondingly made it that much less affordable for the average Indian individual to purchase "branded" technology products from the west for speculative experimentation. Although we are one of the world's biggest markets for smartphones, even the most expensive ones in the world, we hesitate to indulge our children with technical toys (e.g. 3D printer kits) that might not work when they get here.While the above points seemingly paint a dismal picture regarding the business prospects of mass adoption of 3D printing (i.e. the consumer segment) in India, the opportunities lie within in those points, as well. Let's examine how...As soon as there are reliable, truly consumer-friendly, ready-to-run, push-button-to-obtain-print 3D printers out there in any significant variety, the same Indian populace which wouldn't want to get their hands dirty, will happily start buying those devices, in the hopes of pushing a few buttons and printing out all their dreams. What about creating 3d models for printing, you say? Ah, come on! We are a nation expert at downloading and posting on social media sites images from the net, public domain or otherwise, claiming them to be our own. Due to the explosion of "free 3D model" web sites such as Thingiverse, the same approach will work great with 3D printing too.A disproportionate number of my acquaintances have already bought the recent XYZPrinting Da Vinci 1.0 3D printer for home use, chasing the allure of "plug and play" that product promises - auto-calibration, push-button operation, just like a personal laser printer (or so they believe).Therefore: A massive trading business opportunity for whoever can market really easy to use 3D printers in this country, whether indigenous manufacture or not. In fact, the "foreign brand" labeling might actually be preferred by the early adopters.Our cultural aversion to "haath ka kaam" has brought India into a position to be reckoned with, in "clean" desk-job industries such as software development, animation, graphic design and to a smaller extent, CAD modeling. Perhaps not so much the top-of-the-food-chain enterprise architecture or finite-element-modeling aspects of these fields, but Indians love sitting at a computer and pushing bits. From there to pushing bits in a 3D modeling software such as the free Digispark Mechanical or open source Blender tools is not a huge leap.Therefore: A massive outsourcing business opportunity, as an organized outsourcing firm, or as freelancers, creating everything from static models, device enclosures and figurines for 3D printing ($30 and up per hour), to highly sophisticated engineering prototype designs with interlocking moving parts and mechanical intricacies ($120 and up per hour).A peripheral opportunity also leaps to mind, similar to what NIIT and eventually thousands of other software training institutes achieved in the early days of the software industry in India: Training institutes to teach 3D modeling skills for the additive manufacturing industry.While the victims of the typical educational system in India might not easily transition to being innovators and makers, there is no dearth of expatriates looking for an opportunity to come back to the homeland and make good. Many such NRIs have been educated in more multidisciplinary environments, and have made enough savings to come back to India and risk a business venture or two.Therefore: An opportunity for expats to return, and set up training, outsourcing, trading, or even (just maybe) manufacturing businesses catering to the booming global enthusiasm for 3D printing. Human resources in India are cheap by western standards, and as a people, we Indians are intelligent enough to grasp something and run with it, given the right opportunity, mentorship and financial security. Best of all, the conformists that our educational system churns out, are excellent followers albeit poor innovators, the foundation of a successful manpower-intensive business. We've proved this with India's massive software developer headcount, already.The cost barriers to personal import are not necessarily a bad thing for the business-minded Indian. At the basic level, import of mass-produced components against an import license (import export code, IEC) by an Indian business takes less effort, and if done right, costs far less, per unit of end product, than for an individual. That is one entry barrier established, demolishing the maverick hobbyist as competition, diametrically opposite to what is happening with 3D printing in other parts of the world. Add to that a crew of assemblers, testers, sales people and service technicians, and the disorganized sector that has been the forerunner of personal 3D printing elsewhere, is thoroughly vanquished into a whimpering minority.Therefore: An opportunity for businesses with vision, to combine imports of kits or key parts, with local sourcing of whatever can be viably fabricated or sourced from domestic suppliers, then build up a solid assembly, sales and support team and take the Indian 3D printing market by storm.Two more entry barriers are easily raised: A good support track record, including no-questions-asked replacement and warranty repair will weigh heavily in favor, compared to an individual attempting to ship a failed part or complete printer overseas in the event of failures. A really small profit margin per unit will make it very difficult for traditional-thinking businesses to enter the field and compete, given our traditional business habits of ripping off the customer for every possible penny on any new or "hot" imported technology. By the time the potential competitors notice the multipliers due to sheer market volume, and thus the net profits per annum, they'd be a year or more behind the early mover.While the mindset of the family-run business leaders in the SME segment will change slowly if at all, India has an increasing population of people fed up with being a drone in a corporate behemoth, saving up enough over the years to become small-scale entrepreneurs in diverse fields. Also, the angel funding and venture capital climate in India is beginning to favor the small entrepreneur (baby steps yet), diverging a wee bit from the more common funding of mobile app makers and hospitality startups.Therefore: A trickle of new entrepreneurial ventures starting up in not-yet-saturated areas like custom jewelry making, industrial design, architectural modeling, is trending towards a flood. These new entrepreneurs are often more forward thinking than old money, and will grasp at any technology that can give them leverage - including 3D printers and 3D printing services. The actual opportunity thus is to provide the services, and eventually the machines, to empower these diverse budding SMEs:If a 3D printer business in India were to start with a ShapeWays-like service, then also offer a hire-purchase arrangement for a range of 3D printers, that would effectively capture the entire life-cycle of these start-up SMEs, from getting work done at a 3D printing agency, to easing into ownership of a 3D printer or two without a large initial capex, to finally moving enough volumes to justify industrial-scale 3D printers, if the SME's business model supports it.The declining value of the rupee is not a show-stopper: Repeat after me, "Thank you, China!". While successive elected governments in India, and their "5-year vision" short-term policies, have effectively decimated the manufacturing capabilities of India, China's incredible evolution into the world's biggest mass manufacturer, their huge investments in manufacturing machinery and technology, coupled with their policy of artificially keeping their currency value low to favor trade, have worked out not just in their favor, but (if you think about it) ours as well. As Chinese manufacturers push harder for the cream of the world's manufacturing contracts (the iPhone, premium laptops, integrated circuits), they are finding themselves with a surfeit of production capacity in the low-technology and high volume areas that were once China's most familiar export.Therefore: An opportunity to leverage China's export focus and capacities, to farm out manufacturing contracts for the low-tech portions of 3D printers, including but not limited to excellently finished injection molded plastic enclosures, precision CNC machined metal parts, laser cut parts, and electronic circuit fabrication and assembly services - as also no-name tools and instruments. Getting those parts fabbed in China and shipped to India invariably works out far cheaper than local manufacture at low to moderate volumes, possibly even at high volumes. Once the parts arrive, Indian technicians can assemble, test and deliver completed 3D printers to both the Indian market, and for export, at a very competitive price compared to import of fully built-up devices, even no-name printers from China.In all the above, note that there is little mention of real technical innovation in the 3D printing space in India. This is for good reason:The best way to fund innovation and domestic research would be to bootstrap using business strategies not very dependent on true innovative and multi-skilled technical minds, which in any case are few and far between in India. Eventually, once the business venture starts paying for itself, reinvest the profits aggressively into research and development, and you would be able to attract the sharpest minds, not just from India but perhaps from all over the world, so long as these minds were encouraged, supported, and paid well enough for them to not consider moving to the west as their most attractive career progression. The next big innovation in 3D printing could very well come from India, but it won't happen easily, and it won't happen overnight.

This TEB Competitions January Competition entry is a re-post of my answer to What is the origin of the first italic typefaces, and why do we call them that?, but with more links added, and each image is replaced with a plain blue one. If you want to see the actual (non-blue) images, follow this link.In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting.The first italic typeface was cut by Francesco Griffo (also called Francesco da Bologna), who was a fifteenth-century Venetian punchcutter who worked for Aldus Manutius, a printer and publisher, and one of the founders of the Aldine Press, 1495. The typeface, commonly referred to as Aldine italic, was first used in a complete volume in a series of small pocket books—called octavos—by Virgil, first published in 1501.The first of the standard octavo Aldines, and the first book printed in italic, published by Aldus Manutius’ Aldine Press in 1501. (Image source: Wikipedia)Earlier useThe Aldine italic does appear in an earlier print as well: a much larger folio edition of The Epistole of St. Catherine of Siena, published in 1500—although the typeface is only used in a woodcut illustration (as seen below), while the body text is set in a roman typeface (Type 2:114R).Original page-size 308 × 210 mm. (Image credit: Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek)Detail showing the first use of the Aldine italic. Text (Latin): iesu dolce / iesu amore. (Image source: L’Arena)Style of typefaceThe style of the Aldine typeface is humanist; it was modeled on the handwriting of the period following from the style. Scribes on which the typeface has been or might have been based are:Niccolò de’ Niccoli (1364–1437) — Italian Renaissance humanist and regarded as the inventor of the cursive script, known today as Italic or Cancelleresca.Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) — Italian humanist, who wrote in a beautiful and legible cursive style.Bartolomeo Sanvito (1433–1511) — A scribe, and a master of humanist italic script.Pomponius Laetus (1428–1498) — An Italian humanist, who has been called the first head of a philological school.Possibly even Aldus Manutius’ own handwriting.Niccolò de’ NiccoliA sample of Niccoli’s cursive script. (Image source: New York Art Resources Consortium)Poggio BraccioliniA sample of Poggio’s cursive handwriting from a letter to Pope Nicholas V on his Diodorus translation. (Image credit: Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati)Bartolomeo SanvitoSanvito’s humanist script. (Image source: Miniatura Italiana)Pomponius LaetusManuscript of Claudian, In Rufinum, in Pomponius’ handwriting with his commentary, 1361–1376. (Image source: Wikipedia)Italic typeHistorically, rather than a different style, italics were initially distinct typefaces used to set entire books in. These italics had upright roman capitals, as you can see in the image below.The Aldine italic in Aldus’s Virgil of 1501. (Image source: I Love Typography)It wasn’t until later that italic typefaces were used predominantly for emphasis, and became a style of roman typefaces rather than a typeface in their own right.Pocket booksThe typeface was more economical (the amount of text that can be fitted in a given space) than the typical roman type due to its narrow proportions, and retained its clarity better at smaller sizes. As such, Aldine italic revolutionized the printing industry.The first ever book issued in the octavo format was this edition of the works of Virgil, printed in 1501. (Image source: Manutius in Manchester)At a time when books were quite large and costly, and thus were only for the wealthy, the introduction of italic type allowed smaller typesetting and thus made it possible to print smaller books—thus decreasing their price, increasing their production, and making them (more) portable.Aldus, writing to his friend, the eminent Italian scholar, Scipio Carteromachus:We have printed, and are now publishing, the Satires of Juvenal and Persius in a very small format, so that they may more conveniently be held in the hand and learned by heart (not to speak of being read) by everyone.EtymologyThe Italians called the cursive type style Aldino, while others referred to it as Italic. Because other/later punchcutters would emulate Aldus’ type, they either omitted credit to Aldus for inventing italic type, or more likely they preferred not to reference a particular person. I think it’s for this reason that Aldine became a distinct style of roman type (also referred to as Garalde), whereas Italic became known as the cursive humanist style that tends to accompany the roman.Italic (adj.)Type of printing with lines sloping to the right. “Of or pertaining to ancient Italy,” 1610s, from Latin Italicus. So called because it was introduced by Aldus Manutius, printer of Venice, and first used in his edition of Virgil, which was dedicated to Italy.SourcesBarker, Nicholas, Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script & Type in the Fifteenth Century. Fordham University Press, New York, 1992.Lowry, Martin, The World of Aldus Manutius. Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice. Oxford: Blackwell, 1979.Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with type: a critical guide for designers, writers, editors and students. Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.Updike, D. B., Printing Types. Their History, Forms and Use. Oak Knoll Press/The British Library, 2001.

So many. I will add more and more later as soon as they come top of my head.1) There is a company, who makes profit from their employees rather than making profit from it’s customers/clients. This is their strategy to make profits.Company bids lower than the market price to get the project, once they get the project, they hire employees at lower than the market price on contractual basis. Then deploys their employees at client site and earns the commission given by client to the company in the form of employees’ salary.Client paid example $100 to the company for their employee salary and company gives $6 to $11 to employee.Company name is HCL, belongs to India.2) There is another company, who gives (impossible to accomplish) data entry projects to any small company and in return takes around $1500 as a security deposit which is obviously non-returnable. Also if the small company wants to quit, they have to pay penalty of around $5000.Before giving you project, this fraud company will ask you to sign agreement which is obviously one sided and in their favor only. You can’t sue them.These kind of companies are working openly under the nose of police officials and have mushroomed across the nation in different names.3) There is an e-commerce website, well known to everyone. First they sell something at a little bit higher price and then will refund the customer the balanced amount by saying that the price dropped suddenly or mistakenly charged and that is why they have reimbursed the money; just to make them more loyal to the customer and to do free promotions which customer will do onwards through word of mouth to their friends and family that, how good and loyal e-commerce people are.Company is called Amazon- India.4) There is another company chain who has multiple branches through out the country. It is obvious that customer would want to buy the product at the cheapest rate no matter from which branch/place they are buying because it is a one nation after-all.So what company does is, if any customer calls to know the price of the product, that company guy share the customer details to all the branches. So in case if that customer calls up another branch to know the price, company guys will not entertain him/her because they already know that this customer already called our one branch/place.For me, it is a biggest scam and a breach of customer’s right to purchase the product from any place they want.5) There is one giant mobile company. Who at first place, put thin front screen glass on mobile, thinner than the atom(pun intended) to make sure customer breaks it within a month, so that they can charge thousands of rupees to replace it will be counted as a physical damage and that is not under warranty. On top of it, company had permanently fixed/joined the front screen glass with the mobile display itself.So no matter your phone’s screen glass got broken or the display, both must be replaced and the price is too much which not everyone can afford it. The biggest scam I would say.This fraud company name is SAMSUNG.6) There are printer companies and all play same percentage of dirty business tactics.First they sell printers at lower margin of profit, then, they sell cartridges/toners at much higher rate. Can you imagine the cartridge rate is equal to the printer price and that too those cartridges will not lasts more than a month at maximum. Disgusting tactics.Company name is all printer making companies such as Canon, HP etc.