Focusing on tapping educational and financial institutes Sensing the current market pulse of the country, RICOH India Limited has outlined new business strategies to tap fresh domains with the launch of a set of economical machines to meet the needs of Indian customers. In this context, Avijit Mukherjee, chief operating officer, Production Printing - SBU, RICOH India Limited talks about the company’s aggressive move to double its overall activities by the next fiscal in an exclusive interview with Print & Publishing. The fresh challenge in RICOH India’s strategic plans to introduce a new range of economical machines and penetration into newer domains would be an endeavour to boost the company’s overall business into ‘double’ by FY 2014. By and large, the company’s new move is to fortify ‘value for money’ in the gradually growing Indian printing industry. “We have started all our budget, strategy and our sale force is growing, sales models are adding up and utilising alternate channels to extensively reach our customers,” said Avijit Mukherjee adding that the biggest challenge is to reach the customers in a prospective and productive way. He further explained that India is home to more than 1,50,000 offset printers and the new mission of RICOH would be directly reaching to all these companies based unnoticeably in far and away corners of those less-explored destinations like Nagpur, Raipur, Kochi, Thirupur, Shivakasi, etc.

Exploring new domains

RICOH India boasts of one of the largest networks and direct presence to its customers. Entry-level, mid-level and high-end machines of the company formed a complete portfolio which comprises the entire range of colour and B&W multifunctional systems, cutsheet colour and B&W production printers, continuous colour and B&W production printers, copy printers, etc. RICOH India has a strong network of 14 branch offices and 230 dealers across the country. “We have sufficiently covered tier I cities so far, now is the time to target tier II & III cities,” remarked Avijit.

Yet another domain which RICOH India is targeting to push business to a new level will be the government and private educational and financial institutes across the country. “We are going to give concentrated effort on this and we have received a couple of orders to be delivered soon. It can be college, university or any institute, we have been associating with to deliver arrays of machineries for their central reprographic departments,” asserted Avijit. He added that most of the financial institutes adopt digital presses to print reports, portfolios and other documents in colour.

Fresh advantage

Institutes like Franklin, Stanley and others have already installed RICOH colour presses. Financial institutes are the main target which RICOH India is now planning to rope in. In this respect, Avjit said, “If we refer RICOH’s performance across Asia (except India), 70 percent of digital presses have been sold to educational institutes, universities and financial institutions. Look at the old universities in India, they all have their own printing presses. Be it University of Calcutta, University of Bombay, University of Madras, they have central reprographic departments for exams, results and other documents in need, they never outsource these printing tasks.”

These days, most of the boards of educations in India own printing presses to print all their internal documents. “Of course, if you outsource exam question papers to an offset printer, there is high chance to get it leaked,” explained Avijit adding, “In worst case of ‘leaking’ while printed in an in-house digital press facility, it’s quite easier to rearrange a fresh set of the documents immediately.” He thus explained that digital press has revolutionised this market and RICOH India would embark upon this tremendously expanding segment.

Needs of applications

The next year will witness a series of RICOH India’s economical machines which would be launched in different cities. Sales force of the company will be doubled to successfully implement the new launches. The company has sales and re-sales teams in Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata and other parts of the country. “With the introduction of our new and economical range of printers, our reach to the customers will be expanded to newer extent,” said Avijit. “We have established our leadership in the mid segment. We have unearthed the needs of applications of customers when it comes to referring our upcoming economical machines,” he added.

RICOH has partnered with Heidelberg to focus on photo labs. “Partnership with Heidelberg is a self indication that RICOH wants to be very strong in graphic arts under a long-term strategy. Similarly, our introduction of new economical machines would bring in new momentum in book printing market. We will help our existing partners to involved with printing documents of volumes which particularly come from banks, insurance companies and multi-programme companies. In this connection, we have started the activity, which will be expanded more strategically next year.”

Another fresh upsurge at RICOH India is that the company’s Pro L4000 series large-format Latex printer, which had successful showcase during drupa 2012 at Dusseldorf, Germany, will hit the Indian market by the end of FY 2013.

Today the photo printing market of India is on rise as advanced digital colour presses like Canon imagePRESS series have revolutionised this segment into a new leap. Latest in the development includes two Kerala-based companies which have recently adopted Canon imagePRESS series in their endeavour to deliver finest photo prints. Thampy Thomas of Priya Color Lab and N Narayanan of Rathna Photo Emporium share their progressions following the adoptions of the digital colour presses in an exclusive chat with Print & Publishing. Be it preserving memories of vacations, occasions, anniversaries and other special moments in life in some ways or others, printing of innovative photo albums on non-tearable medias on digital presses is a trend these days. Taking on this trend are Priya Color Lab and Rathna Photo Emporium, two leading photo printing corners in Kerala, whose labs have recently been updated with Canon imagePRESS digital colour presses.

Continuing journeys

Priya Color Lab was established in the year 1980 with its business involved mainly into selling B/W photo films and chemicals. “As per the new trends surfaced across the region’s photo lab/printing market, we pulled alongside new activities which can meet the increasing demands for newer applications in this market segment,” said Thampy Thomas adding that the adoption of Canon imagePRESS C7010VP was the company’s deliberate decision to unleash their creativity in photo printing. “Around 90 percent of our overall activities is now involved with photo printing,” Thampy further mentioned.

Similarly, the establishment of Rathna Photo Emporium as a brainchild of R Natarajan dates back to the 1980s. In the first place, the company’s overall tasks comprised just compilation job of photo books and framing jobs. “As long as the changes in market are concerned, we’d like to mention our landmark entry into the photo printing around four months back with the installation of Canon imagePRESS C6010,” asserted N Narayanan.

Unique attributes

Machine portfolio of Priya Color Lab consists of other equipments like Xerox DocuColor 242. “But the addition of Canon imagePRESS C7010VP makes us capable to print Duplex jobs (to print both sides of a page in a single pass) on varieties of medias and hence produces light weight photo albums, which is perhaps the latest trend in the contemporary photo printing market,” mentioned Thampy. This Canon imagePRESS series prints A4 sized jobs at 60 ppm and 70ppm consistently, regardless of the weight of media, in 1200 x 1200 dpi.

On choosing the Canon imagePRESS, N Narayanan mentioned that the newly installed Canon imagePRESS C6010 at Rathna Photo Emporium has a real colour production performance, backed by world-class Oce support and its double-side printing technology in a single pass is unique. “Now we are into a very beginning stage of our photo and poster printing activities which we believe to be grown in a bigger way soon as we see a good future prospect in this segment,” said N Narayanan.

Satisfactory outputs

Kerala is witnessing increase in demands for photo album printing. Canon has successfully installed Canon imagePRESS series across the state where the Canon engine is being used exclusively for photo printing to satisfy new and innovative ways of preserving memories in the form of albums for customers from different walks of life. “Our customers include photo labs, professional photographers, individuals and others. For them we print around 600 photos per day on Canon imagePRESS C7010VP; but the count increases during the peak wedding seasons or festive times,” revealed Thampy. He added that the clientele of Priya Color Lab also consists of some regular customers from overseas destinations like Chicago, Dubai, etc.

In this context, N Narayanan mentioned that the profiles of his customers are predominantly of professional freelance photographers and walk-in individuals. “Sometimes we could deliver around 8-10 complete photo albums a day. In addition to photo printing, we are also into A3 sized poster printing and other small jobs like business cards, brochures, etc,” he added. N Narayanan stressed on Rathna Photo Emporium’s all-time endeavour to satisfy their customers with the help of latest technologies sprouting in the industry, from time to time.

-with launch of three A3+ ultra-professional photo printers: PIXMA PRO- 1, PIXMA PRO 10 and PIXMA PRO 100 As part of its strategy to get top position in the inkjet printer market, Canon India Pvt Ltd recently announced the launch of the all-new advanced series of ultra-professional printers for in-studio photo printing. With the launch of PIXMA PRO-1, PIXMA PRO-10 and the PIXMA PRO-100, Canon intends to revolutionize the market for in-studio photo printing in India. These printers are especially designed to meet the requirements of photographers with no compromise on productivity and very high colour accuracy printing. The Canon PIXMA Pro series aims to augment the quality of professional photo printing offer in India and help the company achieve a dominant status in this market.

“India is one of the most crucial markets in the APAC region for Canon. With a large number of growing avid photographers, we believe the PIXMA PRO series will be an innovative solution for photographers’ needs. With the help of these printers, every consumer can now bring photos to life and preserve their memories for a lifetime. At Canon, we believe in foreseeing the future of technology and empowering every consumer with the latest technology,” conveyed Kazutada Kobayashi, president and CEO, Canon India, speaking on this occasion.

As per Dr Alok Bharadwaj, executive vice president, Canon India, “India has over 10,000 professional photographers and half of them are Canon users. Over several years we have been addressing their strong needs for photo capturing equipments and accessories in the Indian market. With our domain expertise we have witnessed a strong requirement for ultra high quality fine art prints and the rise of new domain called ‘in-studio’ printing. We are delighted to enter into this domain which is estimated to be over 50 crores in size by 2013. We would target 50 percent of this in the year 2013.” “Every specialized input for master craftsmen in photography has been incorporated in these printers to produce output exactly as the photographer imagined it to be. The PIXMA Pro-series is indeed a quantum leap in professional in-studio printing in India,” he added.

Though Xerox’s engines equipped in its different models are being used in producing photo prints of astonishing quality since quite some time, Xerox India never made a dedicated effort to target this segment. But recently concluded photo fair in New Delhi with a new name ‘Consumer Electronic Imaging Fair 2013’ saw Xerox presence significantly in this segment. Here are excerpts from a brief interaction of P&P with Pankaj Kalra, head - graphic communications business, Xerox India at their stand during the fair. Why the name of photo fair was changed to ‘Consumer Electronic Imaging Fair 2013’? The answer is obvious, the technology of producing photo-prints by conventional process of colour-lab has done away with, and the entry by imaging equipments employing different print technologies has come a long way now. Whether it is toner or liquid ink, many companies offering different products have been successful significantly by producing the quality at par with the photo labs. In addition to this, the availability of finishing equipments like lamination, creasing, cutting machines, album making tools and special effect films has made the photo making process more user-friendly.

At their stand in the ‘Consumer Electronic Imaging Fair 2013’, Xerox India displayed their flagship Xerox 1000 color press, that was one of the star attractions at the show, along with five ancillary finishing equipments to attract their prospects. Apart from that, five of their many Xerox users were present at their stand displaying their state-of-the-art products ranging from photo albums, wedding album, and miscellaneous photo albums to personalized calendars, etc.

As per Pankaj the concept of wedding albums is on the top in India as regards to digital print technology, whereas in the US and Europe, the concept on the top remains memory books, apart from armature photographers getting their photo books printed. “We in India are proud to disclose that in the year 2012, we could install 50+ digital presses in South, West and Northern parts of the country dedicatedly to photo segment,” informed Pankaj. So, were there any challenges while focusing photo segment, Pankaj confirmed, “Yes there were few of these understanding photo as a print specially the colour profiles, tonal values, etc. So far we were talking CMYK but now it was RBG, which we could finally resolve with great success,” conveyed Pankaj confidently.

How convenient is to enter photo-imaging activity as an entry level venture? Pankaj remarked, “How much one need to invest is not a big deal,” adding, “A small sum of around Rs 16 lakh for the printing machine and Rs 04 lakh for the finishing devices are needed to make a beginning. Indeed, it is also not a big deal, if someone wants to opt for such initiative, Xerox India is there to support significantly, with a target to install more than 100 digital presses for photo segment in the year 2013.”