Channel Chief
“We Want To Replace Laser Printers With Inkjet Printers”
 Minoru Usui, the inventor of micro peizo print-head technology, and the global President of Seiko Epson, was recently in India. He spoke to Dhaval Valia about the company’s global strategies and India plans
What are your impressions about the Indian market and particularly about Epson’s business in the country?
I had first been to India some 12 years ago, and since then the country has grown tremendously. The roads and infrastructure have improved, and there are more fancy cars on the roads now.
After becoming the President, this is my first visit here, and I have spent five days meeting up with partners and customers. I am happy with the way Epson’s business is growing in India. In fact, I have been very impressed with the quality of the channel network we have built over here.
India is the most important market for Epson, and we are looking at various initiatives to grow our business and market share in this country.
The Epson business in India is roughly Rs 400 crore. What’s the growth you’re looking at over the next five years, and what initiatives do you plan to roll out to achieve your long-term targets?
In 2009, despite the slowdown, we grew by 28 percent in topline business. By 2015, we intend to triple our revenues from India. Our focus will be on four areas—dot matrix printers (DMPs), the inkjet business, projectors and retail POS solutions.
In India, also globally, we are the market leader in the DMP segment with 60 percent share, and we intend to consolidate our position.
Projectors is another business where we enjoy global market leadership, and in India we are a close number two with 13 percent market share as against InFocus which has 13.5 percent. Here we are focusing on the education market and launching higher brightness products suited for large auditoriums and halls. Wi-Fi projectors is another category that is showing good growth, and we intend to capitalize on it.
On the inkjet front, our strategy is to increase our presence in the consumer category by adding new stand-alone products which suit the printing needs of different types of customers; we will also focus on replacing laser printers with inkjets. We believe we have the inkjet technology to provide lower TCO as compared to lasers, hence our focus will be to inform and educate business customers about the TCO proposition of inkjets.
While your focus is inkjets, your market share in India is still low compared to HP’s. What’s more, you don’t have a strong multi-function inkjet portfolio, the segment that’s growing the fastest among consumer inkjet printers.
As per the latest research figures, in the consumer inkjet category we have 16 percent market share in terms of units and 30 percent in terms of value. This demonstrates that we are doing well in the premium segment. Photo printers have been our strongest market because we have very good products there.
I agree that we don’t have a strong MFP portfolio. However, I must point out that over the last 12 months we have introduced 5-7 models in India, and that we plan to add some more products this year. We have seen good pick-up for our MFP products in the last 12 months. In addition, our Wi-Fi printers are showing good acceptance in the market.
You talked about segmenting your products based on users’ printing needs. Could you please elaborate?
For many emerging markets like India, we believe product segmentation is an important business model to succeed; this includes both hardware and consumables. For instance, the person who is buying a photo printer is willing to pay a premium for consumables because he wants very good quality photo printouts. He is willing to pay a premium for both the hardware and consumables. We therefore need to have a different product strategy for this type of user.
Similarly, a small business uses the inkjet printer for transaction-based printing where the volumes are higher and so is the criticality of the printer. This kind of customer may be willing to pay for a robust and reliable product; however, we still need to have low-cost consumables that will help this customer to reduce the cost of his volume printing.
This is what we intend to focus on. I believe it’s the right strategy, and will help in broadening the market for inkjet printers.
Is Epson retreating from the laser printer business?
While we own the inkjet technology, we don’t own the laser technology, hence it is not our core focus. However, I wouldn’t say we intend to withdraw from this segment. We will continue selling laser printers in geographies such as Europe, US, Japan and certain markets in Asia, where we have a strong base of customers using our products and also a strong partner network that generates significant business from our brand of laser printers.
Nevertheless, going forward, our strategic agenda is to develop inkjet technologies that compete with laser printers and eventually replace them. On the color front, inkjets already offer a strong cost advantage over lasers; our effort is to do the same in the monochrome segment.
One of the reasons Epson hasn’t been able to establish a foothold in the enterprise segment with its non-impact printers is that you don’t have an entire solutions and services portfolio. Your competitors are talking about document management services (DMS), fleet management software and managed print services—while Epson is still selling a box.
I agree that many printer companies have good DMS and work flow solutions. We are looking at striking alliances where we can work with companies having such solutions and services, and offer a total printing solution to enterprises.
We are looking at creating such alliances in markets like US and Japan. In India however, our focus is very clear—to increase the overall printer market by offering customer-centric products and replacing laser printers with our inkjet printers that offer better TCO. We will be closely working with our partner network in India, and we will empower them with the programs and tools to implement our business strategy. |