Japan’s Canon Inc may look at setting up a global call centre in India, according to chairman & CEO Fujio Mitarai. On a maiden visit to the country in his capacity as head of the camera and photocopier major, Mitarai said he would explore its possibilities once he got back to his country. “Right now, it is just my personal idea,” he told reporters here.
With 80 per cent of its sales coming out of Japan, and almost 60 per cent of manufacturing outside that country, a stronger yen helped the company offset part of the foreign exchange and tsunami-related losses. “It is not like the old days. Now there is no big havoc (arising out of strengthening yen to the company’s bottom-line),” Mitarai said.
The Canon boss, is here to commemorate the Tokyo-based company’s Indian subsidiary completing 15 years, expects this country to contribute around five per cent of the parent’s sales in the medium term. Currently, out of its Rs 2,25,000 crore-odd global sales ($45 billion), India contributes under one per cent at Rs 1,525 crore. “A large population, and the growing (ranks of) productive age group and the middle class hold out great potential for us here,” he said. Apart from a big consumption market, Mitarai is also gung-ho on the country’s software skills: “Our Indian software team is increasingly getting into research and development work for the whole of Canon.”
On the question of setting up a factory in India, Mitarai was not too enthusiastic. “In the long run, it will happen, but it will need the country to upgrade its infrastructure -- roads, ports, industrial parks.” Currently, the company imports the stuff it sells in India like cameras, photocopiers and the like. It has 17 manufacturing facilities outside Japan, and Asia accounts for a bulk of it -- China (6), Malaysia (3), Vietnam (2) and one each in Taiwan and Thailand.
“Globally, we’re shifting focus to high value-added businesses like cinema cameras, medical devices, even CCTVs,” said Mitarai, reflecting on the dangers from new rivals and technologies for the company, which has been selling cameras for the last 75 years. (After all, the spectre of a bankrupt Kodak is still fresh in public memory.)
Does the mobile-camera pose an existential dilemma for the company’s entry-level range? “Well, initially even we braced ourselves for tough competition from mobiles in the low-end camera market. But, our experience is showing that the two are coexisting,” Mitarai said. “Moreover, with the technology we have, at the low-end market we provide a much higher resolution that is not possible with camera-phones.”
Mitarai was noncommittal on whether his company would get into the emerging business of tablets or mobiles.