By Priyanka Chowdhury
Printer vendor Canon is planning to join an array of vendors who are increasingly looking at growth markets like government and education, and it is in the process of signing up with Systems Integrators (SIs). The vendor is also planning to increase its presence in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, and is looking at increasing its retail presence in these cities.
“In order to beat the slowdown and also increase our geographical coverage, we are planning to focus on segments that have or will be rolling out numerous projects in the next six months. Thus, our plan is to focus on the government and education segments that take out turnkey and e-governance projects. To meet our objective we plan to appoint SIs who will help us to operationalize our products in these segments. We have already appointed 24 SIs and plan to appoint another 26 by the end of 2009,” said V P Sajeevan, Assistant Director, CSP division, Canon.
“We also will be targeting segments such as energy, telecom, BFSI and PSU, and will be seeking to bundle our products with OEM PC vendors. We have already tied up with OEM PC vendors like Dell, Lenovo and Acer in this regard,” adds Sajeevan.
Another area where the vendor plans to increase its footprint is in the retail segment in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. “We already have a strong retail presence in tier-1 cities, and would like to strengthen our position in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. We are planning to open 500 retail outlets across the country by the end of 2009,” revealed Sajeevan. Currently, the company has 2,500 retail outlets.
Canon is also looking at focusing on entering the traditional IT retail space. In this regard, the company had launched a pilot project called the ‘Print City Project’ in tier-2 cities such as Guwahati, Kochi, Indore and Chandigarh. In this project, the company partnered with the traditional IT retailers of the city and helped them in the sales of its products. Canon will be providing the partners with the latest printers and scanners as demo products for their stores. The vendor is also providing training for the partners on these products so that it will be easier for them to explain the product to customers.
“After seeing the success of the Print City Project in these cities, we will now be rolling it out in tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” disclosed Sajeevan. |