Projecting sharper growth

ZOOMING IN

IN ITS BID to grab a bigger share of the office electronics market, Sharp Business Systems (India) recently launched a digital full colour multifunctional system "" AR-C170M.

"We're ushering in the colour revolution. Besides copying, printing and scanning, our new product is also enabled to fax documents in colour," said Toshikazu Mori, the company's managing director.

According to Sharp officials, the price of colour machines are now close to mono (black and white) machines. Company officials claim that corporates who opt for Sharp's latest product will save on more than 50 per cent costs as the printing price per copy will come down.

Priced at Rs 7 lakh, Sharp is targeting India's top 500 companies and hopes to sell 100 units in the first six months. The company has earmarked a budget of Rs 2 crore annually, especially for marketing concept products such as the AR-C170M.

"We plan to hold roadshows targeting IT resellers and corporates besides print advertising and direct mail campaigns to popularise our product," informs CEO Sunil K Sinha.

Sharp Business Systems (India) Limited is a joint venture between Larsen and Toubro and Sharp Corporation, Japan. The company's turnover last fiscal was Rs 60 crore with digital copiers and printers contributing 50 per cent to the turnover, projectors 35 per cent and fax machines 15 per cent. The company is looking at a 15 per cent growth this year.

Generating ideas

CREATIVITY AT WORK is a paying proposition as an employee working at a southern India branch of ABN Amro Bank found out. He had been making copies on 'draft' mode rather than the 'normal' mode on photocopy machines and printers "" saving substantial amounts of ink.

When ABN Amro decided to implement its pet project Ideamine, he keyed in his 'idea' and it became the first initiative to be implemented by the bank. Today photocopy machines in all 17 branches use the 'draft' mode. The bank saved Rs 2.5 lakh on the first day.

The whole process started when senior managers realised that employees down the line were brimming with fresh ideas. "New employees are always full of ideas, and this initiative we have found tends to create a sense of belonging," says Raj H Katra, head human resources, ABN Amro. Katra borrowed the concept from his former organisation, Thomas Cook.

Employees can log on to the Ideamine site and key in their ideas, which could come under any heading like cost savings, ATMs, credit cards, HR practices, improving customer service or improving operational efficiency.

Ideas are then screened by an in-house review committee. "Adopting this practice, we are trying to nurture creativity and the ability to look at things differently," says Katra.

Of course, ABN Amro is not gung-ho about the idea for nothing; it has found that this initiative saves the bank crores of rupees. Last year Ideamine generated over 500 ideas and resulted in cost savings of Rs 1 crore.

So swell has been the response from employees, this pet project of ABN Amro India has also been implemented by the head office in Amsterdam.

So why should employees be keen to generate ideas? Aside from recognition, employees get small tokens of appreciation from the bank. For instance, the employee who came up with the brainwave to take copies under the draft mode is now the proud owner of a DVD player.

Sandalwood cosmetics

IN THE HEAVILY regulated sandalwood industry, the Rs 500-crore Surya Vinayak Industries controls 80 per cent of total domestic production. The Delhi-based company produces roughly 70 tonnes of the tree oil a year and supplies perfumery compounds to the personal care industry.

But now the company is looking at forward intergration and entering the Rs 1,700 crore branded cosmetic market with a new sandalwood-based range called Lambency. Aimed at the upper and the middle class women, the range of nine products, including face pack, cream and oil, claims to be 100 per cent pure.

Currently, the company has R&D units in Delhi and Haryana where it has invested nearly Rs 7-8 crore. The company is expecting a turnover of Rs 10-12 crore by end of this finacial year.

Lambency will have both sandalwood-based (creams, oils) and non-sandalwood based (rose water) products and will be priced from Rs 5 to Rs 550. But clearly the company wants to cash in on the remedial goodness of sandalwood to push its bottomline.

"The reason for launching the low-priced range without sandalwood is to make the economics work," says Sudhir Sharma, general manager, marketing. A ton of sandalwood gives only 50 kg of oil, the price of which varies between Rs 35,000 and 42,000 a litre.

Additional reporting with Freny Patel and Maitreyee Handique