H-P to focus on e-gov

With the Centre and state governments building public-private partnerships for bringing e-governance and rural connectivity, Hewlett-Packard India has identified e-governance as a focus area for its offerings in the printing and imaging series.

The company has already begun associating with e-governance programmes in the country through Project Chirag in Tamil Nadu, Bhoomi in Karnataka, e-seva in Andhra Pradesh, Drishti in the North East and others, and is negotiating for projects with various other governments.

HP's My OfficeJet series has caught on with companies collaborating with the government on rural connectivity and is prompting HP to promote the product as a customised offering for the segment.

"One-third of HP's business comes from the imaging and printing division. After the large and small enterprise business market, the company is looking at the e-governance market and expects growth of 43. 5 per cent, " said Ashwini Aggarwal, country marketing manager, Business Imaging and Printing Products, Hewlett-Packard India Sales.

The company had earlier conducted a project called Chetna in a village in Rajasthan for studying the rural market and has decided to promote its Photo Smart Printers and other entry-level products in these markets.

However, for its other segments, HP, on the basis of its recent research has decided to concentrate on multi-product printers rather than single purpose printers and imagers, which Aggarwal says are going through a decline.

In its latest launches, HP has brought out innovative technology like Edgeline Technology, which is targetted at high volume office printing, industrial printing and retail printing solutions.

The company estimats this will be a $30 billion market by 2009. It has also invested $1.4 billion in the Scalable Printing Technology which is targetted at SMEs.