Ricoh India eyes small cities to ramp up growth

Sees demand from healthcare and retail segments

Printer and camera maker Ricoh India said it would focus on smaller cities to increase sales growth to 60 per cent in 2015-16. “Tier-II and Tier-III cities offer significant business opportunity. We plan to invest about Rs 300 crore in the next two years to strengthen our sales and service channels in remote areas,” said Manoj Kumar, managing director and chief executive officer of Ricoh India.

The company forayed into software services a few years ago and said in 2014-15 it made about 65 per cent of its Rs 1,637.81 crore revenue from the information technology solutions business. Its hardware business, comprising printers, copiers, and cameras, makes up for 35 per cent of sales.

However, Ricoh does not differentiate between infotech solutions and goods sales in its balance sheet, saying these are integrated sometimes.

“Software and hardware complement each other. So if a hospital uses our imaging solution, they also get to use our cloud service Picasso, which enables them to store everything on our server,” Kumar explained.

The subsidiary of Japanese imaging and office automation major Ricoh said it was focusing on the banking and finance industry, manufacturing, healthcare, education and the retail sector to achieve its target of Rs 4,000 crore revenue by 2016-17.

“As manufacturing facilities are primarily located in smaller cities and with the mushrooming of hospital and retail chains there, there is a huge opportunity for us to expand. We will strengthen our distribution system, marketing initiative and channel business in these locations,” Kumar added.

The company is, however, not shying away from its core business and plans to increase its market share in printers.  “We will overtake competitors in the laser printer business soon to become the No. 1 player in the category,” said Kumar.