Ensuring seamless print experiences with new vision and strategy

Outlining strategy for digital print transformation in India to accelerate business growth, HP is poised to further strengthen India’s role in driving global efforts in R&D and innovations. As per the company estimates, India will create a 120 billion page opportunity by 2014, fueling market growth, with content exposition, mobility and the web, analog to digital transformation, and service-based business models. Through a series of new initiatives designed to deliver seamless, secure, context-aware print experiences in a connected India, HP underscored its commitment for growth in the country. Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi during his recent visit to India for meeting customers and partners across Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi, Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice-president, HP Imaging and Printing Group signalled the increased focus on this important market and shared the company’s new vision and strategy to leverage the 120 billion pages opportunity in India in the next three years. Underpinning India’s importance as an important market and its growing significance while driving innovations at HP IPG, Joshi said, “Our business is accelerating with India as a key growth engine. Being more committed than ever to growing our business in India where printing industry is transforming, we are driving the industry from the front with our innovation. I am proud to say that some of the critical innovations around web-connected and cloud printing are being done by our engineers in India.” The company claimed to win in India due to: market trends, fueling page growth; being printing leader with broadest portfolio, unique IP and breakthrough innovations; powerful capabilities enabling end-to-end digitization ecosystem; and operating leverage driving capacity to invest for growth; etc.

Propelling growth…

As part of its three-year growth strategy, the company is strengthening its geo-expansion programmes to optimise India’s rapidly growing and young consumer opportunities in non-metro and upcountry markets. The other key growth driver for IPG in India is the education sector, which will be a key focus for investment, especially to create synergies that build greater relevance for printing through content providers that drive the need to print more. India’s emergence as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, with one of the youngest consumer demographics, lies at the heart of this new focus on education, said Joshi, “India’s printing industry is being redefined for business transformation by many significant trends like content explosion, mobility and web-driven new usage models, a movement from analog to digital, and service-driven business models.”

Driving innovations…

The company’s India R&D hub for imaging and printing is leading critical innovation around web connected and cloud printing. The team has made significant contributions to the web-connected printer programme, including key innovation such as the development of email printing capability (ePrint). “Innovation at HP is today allowing consumers to leverage the web and ecommerce applications to simplify transactional activities, increase productivity and enriching lifestyles,” said Joshi.

Strengthening position…

HP underlined its commitment to grow its business in India with a number of other announcements recently. In March, the company said one of HP’s key priorities will be to deliver unique and innovative market-specific solutions to customers in key markets like India. In line with this strategy, the company announced in mid-June that Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president, Imaging and Printing Group, would lead all cross-business initiatives focused on expanding HP’s market share in India. This announcement was preceded by Neeraj Sharma’s appointment as vice-president of HP IPG India earlier this year to lead growth for HP IPG in India..

“In book printing segment, digital has advantage over analog printing: generally forty percent of books printed with conventional process are not read. With the offering of an inkjet colour web-press T300 having capability to produce 25-50 million pages every month, book printing/publishing industry shall benefit immensely in the near future. Presently, around 300 billion gigabytes content is available on web, which may reach up to 3000 billion gigabytes in the next three years. In this scenario, HP is committed to transform client server model into cloud server model,” mentioned Joshi, adding that ‘under managed enterprise services’, HP already has over 3000 customers in India managing all their printing operations.

Talking about Indians’ increasing purchasing power and transformation growing high in India, Neeraj Sharma, the president, Imaging & Printing Group, HP India Sales Pvt Ltd sated, “Presently, HP solutions are efficient enough to print from postage stamps to building wraps. Our offerings will further be ready to meet the growing demand and take the things to the next level. IPG group will, for sure, take these forward.” For HP cloud services, seamless and secure print experience, Ajay Gupta, vice-president, Imaging & Printing Group R&D Hub, HP India demonstrated mobile to print solution which is transforming the whole world of imaging, with HP and Google working together.

John Solomon, senior vice president of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group for Asia Pacific and Japan also graced the occasion and answered some of the questions during Q&A session.