The Hindu Business Line : Kodak to expand retail presence

KODAK India Ltd is eyeing a 300 per cent growth in digital camera sales. It is targeting the computer-savvy consumers, and investing a lot of money in advertising, mainly print, said Ms Manisha Sood, Business Manager (Digital and Applied Imaging), Kodak India.

Speaking to Business Line, Ms Sood said the company would expand the presence of these cameras in retail outlets from photography stores. An initiative taken up only six months ago, Kodak sells its digital cameras only in 25 such stores spread across New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. It aims to sell through 100 outlets by end-2004.

The company targets increasing penetration in the top 12 cities of the country including the metros and Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Kochi, Coimbatore, Pune and Ahmedabad.

Ms Sood said Kodak will do roadshows across the country on weekends, and hike its spend on advertising in the mainline newspapers. There may be a TV commercial at the end of the year. The company usually spends around 5 per cent of its turnover on advertising. The company is also demonstrating the use of digital cameras to shoppers at retail outlets. The endeavour is to tell consumers that "we are also a digicam company", she said.

The company is opening two service centres this month, one each in Ahmedabad and Chandigarh. It has eight spread across other cities.

Digital cameras were slowly becoming popular not only because the price is coming down on account of duty cuts, but also because there are no recurring costs. The 18-25 years age group, not traditionally into photography, was also taking to it, she said. They are even finding place as corporate gifts.

Earlier, it was mostly businesses such as insurance and banks, which used surveyors, were offering incentives in pay to those who used digital cameras. Though prices have dropped to Rs 6,900 at the entry level this year as against Rs 13,900 two years ago and banks were giving loans for their purchase, Kodak still faced a challenge in getting people to buy digital cameras because they were not very high in the `items of desire' list, she said.

Kodak's long-term objective is to make the digital camera experience independence of personal computers, she said. It recently launched a printer dock which enables the user to print the pictures taken without the aid of a PC. Right now, the market is linked to computer penetration - 80 per cent of last year's sales came from Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, she said.

Ms Sood said there were no Kodak cameras in the grey market now. The official prices of its digital cameras were on a par with the grey market prices of other brands, she said.

In 2003, the market for digital cameras in India amounted to one lakh units against 30 lakh units of conventional cameras. According to IDC India, which tracks technology industries, Kodak has 47 per cent market share in digital cameras, Ms Sood said.

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