Canon India’s head Kazutada Kobayashi feels that online retailing in India is unavoidable, however, it cannot conquer the offline retail market.

Canon had stopped selling on Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon a few months ago. It will focus on increasing sales at the physical stores.

According to Kobayashi, normal retail channel can only help expand the sales of digital cameras or DSLRs as touch, feel and a live demo can be best experienced in physical stores.

However, he negates the perception that predatory pricing (huge discounts) is the reason behind the decision against online selling.

“Even in the most developed markets like the US and Germany, online sales of camera are just 10 per cent, while 75 per cent happen through super-speciality stores. In India, only 20 per cent of the sales come from physical stores. We want players like eZone, Croma and Reliance Digital to increase sales of camera at their stores,” Kobayashi said.

Speciality stores Besides, the company is also investing heavily in creating a large user base for DSLRs in India.

This, the company plans to achieve with speciality stores called Canon Image Square. It plans to have 300 such outlets in the country by next year.

At present, there are 100 of these stores, which not only provides "experience" to customers and allow them to try out but also retails Canon cameras.

Kobayashi, who took charge of Canon India at 2012, said that while mobile phones have almost killed the market for compact cameras, it has in a way created the market for digital cameras.

“Mobile phones and apps like Instagram and networking sites like Facebook have encouraged lot of consumers to upgrade.”

Targeting first-time users and amateur photographers in smaller towns with its easy-to-use affordable DSLRs at ₹17,000, Kobayashi said, “Indian consumers are still way behind their counterparts in the developed markets where every household has about three cameras as compared to one in India.”

The company, which saw its sales decline last year, hopes to grow in double digit this year on the back of growing DSLR market and other channels of sales.

Home printers Canon is focusing on affordable home printers at ₹3,000. These printers can be connected to any DSLR camera or even mobile phones through WiFi and can be used at home.

Kobayashi wants India to be one of the top 5 markets by 2018. India, with about ₹1,900 crore revenues, currently is at 20th position globally.

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