Even as India has moved to digital photography, Canon India believes that photo printing remains on an upward trajectory in the country. The company, which launched South Asia’s first commercial inkjet photo printer in Bangalore earlier this week, is bullish on the photo-printing segment and hopes to increase its market share in this space which stands around 30% now. However, Canon India is satisfied with the 50% market share it enjoys in the digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras space in India. Canon India’s President and Chief Executive Officer Kazutada Kobayashi speaks to Itika Sharma Punit about the company’s plans for the country and the ‘birth hiccups’ India is facing in its regulatory framework.
Do you think there is enough demand for prints in today’s digitised world?
The high-end printing market is expanding. Even experts have said that Indians spend a lot of money on wedding events, which is one of our largest target audience for such products. We have launched this product in Bangalore and I think initially we will stick to this market. After evaluating the reaction, we will gradually expand its network. Though metro cities have a higher percentage of our target audience, we will look to expand into upcountry in a few years.
How do you view the competition in Indian market vis-a-vis other Asian countries?
India is obviously a very interesting market. Prior to this assignment, I was working in Hong Kong for three and a half years. In Hong Kong, the penetration of cameras in houses is over 200%; so having two or three cameras per house is nothing special there. Compared to that, India is an emerging market. So we believe that in India, we can bring the new photo culture, both for devices and solutions.
What is Canon’s growth plans in India?
We have a very good balance of business between the business-to-business (B2B) segment and business-to-consumer (B2C) segment in India; the two are divided nearly 50-50. We want further increase our presence in the B2C segment. So post the launch of our commercial inkjet photo printer DreamLabo, we are looking at launching a further line of cameras. In the B2B segment, we are planning to offer more solutions for enterprises. We are not limiting ourselves to just selling copier machines and other products, but we are also looking at consulting business.
What kind of consulting business are you looking at?
We have helped companies print so many papers in the past. So now, we think it is our duty to offer some solution for what to do with all those documents? It is a legal requirement that some documents must be stored and kept for seven to 10 years. So we are looking at how to digitalise and store them. We are looking at paper archival digitally, so that a huge bundle of papers can be condensed or squeezed into a small box, and tagged or indexed well so it can be accessed at random any time.
What is the market share you are targeting in the printers and the cameras segments?
In cameras we want to have a healthy confidence; we currently have about 50% of the market share in the digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras. So I don’t think we are aiming at a 70-80% share in the camera market. We want to rather focus on expanding the market size itself. In the printers space, we currently have around 30% market share, and we want to catch up with Hewlett-Packard (which is currently the leader with nearly 50% market share) and we want to become the number one.
What are your observations of the regulatory environment in India?
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certification that is happening in India now, is not something unusual. Other countries such as the US and Hong Kong already have such policies in place. So there is no worry in meeting the regulations. However, the only issue is that the procedure is a bit complicated. The information flow from the government bodies to the industry is not always clear. I feel India is going through ‘birth-hiccups’ as this is the first time they are introducing such a standard and asking vendors to comply. So I hope in any subsequent launches of regulatory orders, if and when those happen, the process would be smoother. I expect the Radio Frequency Regulation to come up next, and I hope India will be more friendly for vendors then.