Traditional verticals will drive Canon India’s growth, says CEO

Digital imaging company Canon India is eyeing at least 10 per cent growth every year to achieve its targeted turnover of ₹3,500 crore by 2020.

Growth will initially be driven by its four traditional verticals that include camera and printing solutions, while plans for the emerging verticals — medical equipment and security camera businesses — are being firmed up.

The printing business consists offerings in personal, corporate and commercial categories. According to Kazutada Kobayashi, President and CEO, Canon India, the company is expecting camera business, particularly SLRs, to be a prime mover in the country, which ranks amongst its top five global markets.

“We have to grow by at least 10 per cent every year (2017 onwards) to get to ₹3,500 crore by 2020. Growth is being targeted from our four traditional verticals as of now, and we are still working on plans for the emerging verticals,” he told BusinessLine . Canon’s Indian operations saw a 9 per cent growth and a turnover of ₹2,350 crore in 2016.

The business-to-business segment — accounting for half the turnover — saw a 7-8 per cent growth. Increasing demand for colour printing options is said to be one of the future growth engines in the segment.

The other 50 per cent comes from business-to-consumer categories covering cameras and home printers.

According to market sources, there is scope of growth in the home-printer segment with rising preference for printers in nuclear families.

However, the big growth driver in B2C continues to be cameras.

While the home-printing segment saw a 10 per cent growth last year, camera sales saw a 20 per cent jump.

Incidentally, entry level DSLR camera prices have been reduced to ₹20,000 from around ₹25,000 since last year’s festive season.

As compact point-and-shoot camera sales take a hit courtesy mobilephones, “serious photography” enthusiasts are the target audience for these DSLRs.

While the company does have a research and development centre in Bengaluru, all of Canon’s cameras are still imported from Japan and Taiwan.

Other products such as printers and copiers come from China, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea and the Philippines.

Canon and Nikon are the two major players in the DSLR space, holding nearly 90 per cent market share between them.

They are then followed by Sony, Olympus, Pentax and Panasonic.

According to Kobayashi, the company recently introduced integrated offerings under the medical-equipment and security-camera business verticals.

The year 2017 will be spent towards test marketing offerings in the Indian market.

The medical equipment portfolio has offerings for CT, MRI, digital radiography and retinal camera, while security cameras target high-end segments.

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