Peripherals

The Current Initiative of Canon will fuel the Growth of Digital Printing

by VARINDIA 2010-03-25

With the launch of imagePRESS C7000VP digital press in India, Canon will try to capture a major chunk of the market share to climb the ladder for the top position. The estimated printing industry is worth Rs.65,000 crore, out of which Canon is planning to achieve Rs.35 crore target by 2008. Being in both digital production monochrome and digital production colour, Canon is consistently working towards bringing the best technology to digital printing industry with its market-leading products. The rapidly evolving world of digitalized textiles is a reflection of several unique and contrasting business models that create challenges, threats and opportunities to the future of the textile printing market. One of the important issues associated with digital printing on textiles is speed and reliability as this has commercial implication for the industry.

VARIndia team thought of delving deep into the story of digital printing and its market value. In conversation with VARIndia, Som Gangopadhyay, Director – Business Imaging Solutions, Canon India, said, “India is a flourishing market for digital printing. There is a growing volume of digital colour printing inIndia and also a clear transformation from offset to digital has started. With this solution, we are bringing the latest cutting-edge technology for our customers. Digital printing is the next step, and something that will complement offset printing rather than replace it.”

The Indian digital printing industry is projected to grow to $17 billion by 2010 from an estimated $11 billion in 2005, according to the print and packaging research organization, Pira International. Digital printing is the next step, and something that will complement offset printing rather than replacing it. Digital printing is cost-effective, and opens up new avenues with features such as variable data printing which allows you to make large volumes of prints with significant differences in each printed item. The current initiative of Canon will fuel the growth of digital printing in this subcontinent and will help put India firmly in the world of digital printing and publishing.

With the change in the socio-cultural mapping, the demand for digital printing is growing. Families are going nuclear and there is a rise of individualism which gives rise to customization and driving the industry and changing the socio-cultural environment. Urbanization is going apace which is affecting digital printing market in a very big way. Convenience and luxury are two important things, which consumers look for, and both are governed by technology.

Even though a large section of this industry is an unorganized sector, digital printing in India is growing at an exponential rate and the industry has evolved to offer customized solutions and applications that cater to vertical segments like telecom, banking, retail, pharma, etc. Canon believes that India is a potential market for print products. The country is making enormous efforts to reduce the illiteracy rate, which is currently 35 per cent, and as a result several million new readers are emerging every year, and new newspapers are hitting the stand almost every day. This means that there is an ever-increasing demand for print products and consequently for printing presses.

The print industry is waiting to blossom in India with the increasing dependence on the Internet in our daily lives. Canon’s plans are to roll out extensive solutions that will complement the printing and publishing industry. The digital printing industry is undergoing a sea change. Due to stress on customized convenience, there has been a need for fast turnaround times. Canon provides solutions, which help solutions for short runs. In today’s scenario, customized demands from customers are acting as catalyst for overall demand of digital printing. People now accord priority for customized convenience and hence they are now getting more close to digital printing.

In the graphical art industry, digital printing has simplified the process by eliminating intermediate steps between document design and print. Today, digital colour printing is quickly increasing and the print quality is comparable and sometimes even superior to traditional printing methods.

Recently, Canon has made investment to the tune of Rs.2 crore for the launch of their latest product imagePRESS C7000VP Production Printing System at the trade exhibition IPEX ’07. It is designed and targeted mainly to recapture the production-printing domain, which is currently the highest growing printing business at 22 per cent globally.

Key Product Features - imagePRESS C7000VP

‡ Intelligent Registration control – Makes front and back printing accurate and with minimum tolerance.

‡ Productivity – 70 pages a minute regardless of paper weight up to 300 gsm.

‡ Media Acceptance – With the air support in all cassettes including the Professional Paper Deck (POD Deck), issues on coated paper or special paper feeding process has been greatly eliminated. In addition, the POD Deck comes with a double feeding detection that reduced double media feeding problems.

Canon has 280 Channel Partners, 397 Retail Outlets, including 300 IT Imaging Zones, 54 Digiclick Zones, 7 Digic Video Zones, 4-Canon X’perience and 32 Canon Care Centres. It also has over 100 authorized service centres and more than 2,700 resellers across 300 towns in India. Canon has also cued in on the alliance route with 13 national and 28 city-specific different retail chains. Also, the company would be embarking on a 100-city customer contact programme through a Mobile Mini Expo across different tier-2 and -3 cities. This Expo will aim at increasing customer awareness and introducing channel partners to the Gyan Yatra.

Canon is investing heavily in setting up the demo centre and training manpower to focus on the value additions they provide for their customers. These centres will serve as knowledge dissemination centres about the latest printing products and solutions. It is also inaugurating state-of-the-art solution showrooms in Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore with the capital investment of Rs.3 crore. In addition, Rs.5 crore have been earmarked for marketing activities.

“We would also focus on more initiatives towards channel relationship building, focussed and localized advertising and promotion, participation in all major exhibitions, conducting road shows and trainings that would deliver us higher market shares and better partner relationships,” Som concluded.

Finally…

When asked about the goal for 2007, Som said, “Canon is focussing on growing along with the market, as production is not a problem with Canon. We have recently set up a new manufacturing plant in Japan. With enormous growth being witnessed in the digital printing industry, Canon is geared up to take the leadership position in this segment by 2010.”