The Hindu Business Line : Canon to go aggressive on sales

Canon India has also realised the need to be more aggressive in reaching out to the masses. Apart from reforming its marketing establishment into channel-oriented divisions, Canon India is trying to beef up its distribution channel. "We have distributors in 80 towns at present. We are planning to double this in a year's time, and may be take it to 300 towns in a phased manner," Mr Alok Bharadwaj, Vice-President, Canon India, said.

Mr Bharadwaj was in the city to inaugurate the company's first `Home Cinema Centre' in Tamil Nadu. It already has a dozen such centres across the country, apart from 15 Digi-Click zones. "We are planning to add another 13 Home Cinema Centres and 35 Digi-Click zones by December 2005," he told Business Line.

"The felt need for an alternative to going to theatres to watch movies made us look at this concept of Home Cinema. In the last nine months, since the introduction of the Home Cinema Concept, we have recorded a significant jump in the home projector sales. We are offering a solution for home, not a mere product," he said. Mr Bharadwaj added that 33 per cent of Canon India's turnover is from the home segment.

With predictions of the home projector segment growing by 200 per cent this year and surveys indicating the sale of over one lakh systems (in the home segment), the company is keen to establish a chain to tap the market potential.

On digital cameras, he said, "The market size is 2 lakh units a year at present. Our market share is 20 per cent. We expect the industry to grow to a Rs 1,000-crore industry by 2008," he said. Mr Bharadwaj pointed out Canon's growth in this segment: "When we launched the digital camera in 2003, it contributed to one per cent of our turnover. A year later, it increased to 4 per cent of our sales at Rs 12 crore. During the current year, we are hoping to achieve Rs 40 crore, which is about 12 per cent of our total turnover."

The company has spent close to Rs 220 crore on marketing and advertising campaigns to establish a photo-culture in this country, Mr Bharadwaj added. On Canon copiers, he said annual sales averaged 40,000 units and the company's market share in this space is 22 per cent.

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