Canon believes in “Concept Selling”

K. Bhaskhar
Senior Director, Office Imaging Solutions Division
Canon

The Indian scanner industry has made giant strides in recent times in improving its offering in terms of cost, technology and speed. Analyzing the market scenario in India, it is found that there is a set of industry players which are growing systematically and regularly. Canon is one of those leaders of the Indian scanner industry, which has developed a reputation as a visionary company with a commitment to developing technologies that enhance multiple aspects of people's lives. Canon has the distinction of having an impressive client portfolio for its scanning solutions. K. Bhaskhar, Senior Director, Office Imaging Solutions Division, Canon, throws some light on the company’s portfolio, recent path-breaking offerings and market and channel strategies.   

Shed some light on the latest scanner trends in India? 

As the digital era has come, people are willing to take everything from documents to photographs in digital form. In the office space, we have professional scanners and document readers called DR scanners, while in the home space we have recently launched P201 scanner, which is compact, easy-to-carry mobile scanner. We want to position it as “My Personal Scanner”. The key feature of this scanner is the quality of scanning which is far superior to any other scanner available in the market in this price range. When you try to scan a document via a mobile phone and try to expand it, there may be a lot of pixel breakage. So, Canon has good scope in the office space. We are expecting to experience a growth rate of almost 25 per cent during 2013. 

What are the marketing activities that you undertake to build your brand? What is your media mix?

As regards our “go-to-market” strategy, we have three separate verticals. One is through online with sites like Flipkart, StarCJ, etc. The second is, of course, IT resellers who are engaged in this activity and the third one with which we want to enter the market is retail.  In retail, we already have our own 130 CIS stores. In the near future, we would like to add many more retail outlets. 

How many scanner offerings do you have presently? 

For every level of requirement, Canon has a different scanner. Canon’s portfolio of scanners includes 22 devices which include categories like Cheque scanners, flatbed scanners and high- speed document scanners targeting different verticals like SMBs, home users and businesses. Cheque scanners are meant for the banking requirement where users want to scan every cheque presented in the bank. In a flatbed scanner, users can scan single document manually. It starts from 15 pages in one minute to 100 pages in a minute. So, we have the complete range to cater to the requirements of every category of users. 

Where do you look Canon in five years down the line in India?

Presently, we are holding number-one market share in MFDs. We would also like to hold good share in DR scanners. In the scanner business, we have been able to look for about 30% of what we are looking in the market share. We are a very dominant player there, because Canon’s products are far superior in technology and the output is unparalleled. There are a lot of scanners available in the market, but the quality is not up to the mark. Sometimes, images get blurred and at other times the fine dots are missing. All these things are not found in the Cannon scanners. The precision quality is superb. We will still be positioning ourselves as a technology-driven product and whatever products we offer are far superior in technology. And that gives us a niche to be a No. 1 player in the market. 

satinder@varindia.com