Canon plans a dealer per district

Canon India, a digital imaging company, is planning to forge tieups with national and international retail chains to drive more business for its consumer electronic products.

It will also be working towards having at least one dealership in every district headquarter in the country by the end of 2006. Out of the total 600 plus district headquarters, it has dealerships in about 300 district headquarters now, Alok Bharadwaj, vice president, Canon India told Business Standard.

Besides the ti up with national and international retail chains, Canon India will also be eyeing electronics stores across the country to sell its consumer electronic products that include digital cameras, video camcorders, projectors and photo printers.

Bharadwaj, however, said that it would be a challenging task for the company to convince these electronic stores to sell its digital devices as the selling of such devices has traditionally been done only through specialised sales channels.

As part of its retail expansion, the company will be increasing the number of Digitalclick Zones from the present 28 to 100 across the country by the end of next year. It will be doubling its home cinema centres to 30 and the number of IT imaging zones will go up to 300 from the present 108 by the end of 2006.

Enthused by the growth in its brand appeal during 2005, the company will be going for more localised messages in its brand promotion activities during 2006 and will be earmarking Rs.30 crore for brand promotion and retail expansion.

In its attempt to reach more people, it will be selling both low end and high end products in the retail stores. Digicams will be made available at a price between Rs.8000 to Rs.9000 and printers for Rs.3000.

Bharadwaj said that the company would be recording a growth of 17 per cent to about Rs 310 crore for 2005. It expects 30 per cent growth during 2006.

Stating that digital cameras would be the engine of growth in the future, he said that digicam segment's contribution to total revenue has grown to 15 per cent during 2005 from four per cent in 2004 and one per cent in 2003.

This is expected to increase to about 25 per cent during next year.

During 2006, Canon, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Canon Singapore Pte, plans to launch wireless camera, a cartridge system which will provide longer life to the photo prints, and a laser multifunctional copier.

After launching 85 new products during 2005, the company's product portfolio for the Indian market stands at about 130 today.