Canon--a global player in photographic and digital imaging solutions’ India existence--Canon India says it plans to become a billion dollar company by 2015. Its biggest investment will be in advertising and promotions which is expected to be Rs 150 crore in 2011. Pravda Godbole spoke to Alok Bharadwaj, senior vice president, Canon India about how will the company achieve its goal statement.
Which are the main verticals/product categories in which Canon exists?
Canon focuses on five customer segments namely household consumers, large enterprises, Government, commercials and SMEs. In business line we operate in photo and IT peripherals, in product lines we deal in IT peripherals and documentation space and in growth lines Canon operates in photo, IP peripherals and documentation spaces and our main three product divisions are camera, printers and business imaging solutions.
What is the market share of each category?
Among the major contributory product lines, Canon’s market share on the corporate front is 24 per cent, laser printers 35per cent, DSLR- 43 per cent, digital cameras- 25 per cent and scanners- 51 per cent. We are a market leader in scanners, copiers, printers and neck to neck number one in laser printers and DSLRs.
What kind of an investment budget does the company have for the India market for the coming year?
Our biggest investment will be in advertising and promotions which is expected to be Rs 150 crore in 2011. In addition to this, we are planning to invest another Rs 50 crore in creating our own specialty retail stores.
What are these speciality retail stores all about?
Canon recently announced its foray into the retail space with the launch of its exclusive brand retail store called Canon Image Square. The company is planning to make an investment of about Rs 50 lakh per store and an investment of Rs 150 crore in the next three years towards the remaining stores. The company expects estimated revenues of Rs 30 lakh, per store, every month from Canon retail stores.
Strategically, which markets will you focus on?
We see a major shift towards tier II and tier III cities as growth there is at about 55 per cent as against 35 per cent in the top metros. In fact, contribution from these cities is growing at a rapid phase. We have organised several training programmes, channel dialogues in these cities to empower and build their capacities in order to strengthen the Canon brand. Moreover, our key objective is launching mobile showroom-Image Express-to showcase our entire range of printers and cameras to the consumer in these cities.
What kind of expansion plans does the company have for tier-II and tier III cities?
As of now our products are available in 400 towns in India. We hope to be in 500 cities by the end of next year. Besides this, we are planning to set up exclusive retail stores in 150 towns out of that.
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Does Canon have any special products for the SMB sector?
Yes. P-150 High Speed Document Scanner is one such product. It is a product with some unique features like high-speed one-pass scanning, simultaneous scanning of both front and back of a document, plug-and-scan with CaptureOnTouch Lite, USB Powering and the like.
Are these plug-n-play products?
Yes, all of Canon’s products are designed to keep very simple, user- friendly interface and we call it out-of-box performance because they are ready to perform as soon as they are out of the box.
Are there any plans of introducing new products in the India market?
We have a total of about 250 products in India. We replace 100 products every year. We have recently launched 100 products.
How many new products will be introduced and by when?
We plan to launch about 100 products by the end of this year. We recently launched 22 high definition consumer digital imaging products to widen our product portfolio in India and to further accelerate the industry's transformation in terms of product innovation and technology.
Which segments will these products be in?
These new products will be in all the divisions of Canon; namely imaging communication products (ICP), consumer system products (CSP) and business imaging solution (BIS).
Can you share some projections for the coming year?
Canon’s total revenues last year were Rs 840 crore, in 2010 it is Rs 1260 crore and by 2011 we are expecting over 35 per cent growth that is about Rs 1650 crore. We plan to become a billion dollar company by 2015.
How many manufacturing facilities are up and running in India?
We have none in India. We import the products from Asian countries.