Do you think the virulent phase of recession has died-down earlier than expected globally?
The signs are very promising, and suggest that the economy is getting back to its growth path. The consumer sentiment is very high—in fact, the recession never hit India and other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and Chine) countries as badly as it hit the rest of the world. The global economy has shown strong signs of recovery, and rapidly emerging from the pernicious shadows of economic crisis. At the same time, India has consolidated its position as world’s fastest growing major economy after China. The Indian economy is now more open to trades and investments, and despite global downturn India fared better than most other countries and is estimated to grow in excess of 8 per cent this fiscal. Despite the fact that business was affected last year, we, at Canon grew by 27 per cent. During recession, Canon focused on the critical need of the enterprises to reduce their capital expenses (CapEx) and to move to OpEx model. Canon brought operational excellence through intelligent management of print infrastructure and focused on reducing OpEx by minimizing paper usage.
For Canon in its printing manifestation, how would you tap this opportunity rushing in?
The impact of the global recession and the freeze on hardware spending has made organizations look out for solutions which would help them cut costs and better manage their enterprise printing. Also, with printing being looked at as a strategic area, which can keep pace with operational day-to-day demands; more and more companies, now, want to optimize their IT infrastructure by using devices which can help them save power and space. Today, technology has grown at faster rate than user knowledge, and thus most of the tech/usability gets lost. So, user friendliness and collaboration with solutions play a very crucial role. In the forthcoming year, Canon India would work essentially on technologies and provide solutions which would help customer technology decision makers to arrive at an optimum printing and documentation solution

How much focus Canon has given to its new products in making them truly greener?
At Canon, we constantly aim at delighting our customers with new technologies, products and offers. This is another way of conveying our gratitude to our customers. In 2010, we plan to launch several advance technologies and products. Canon takes pride in not only bringing quality products to the market; but also contributes to minimizing environmental burden through effective application of environmental technologies. Canon as an organization is cognizant with the situation of global warming that is threatening our environment in a large way. Since 2008, we’ve initiated a green procurement program across the company which puts in place the practice of purchasing environmentally conscious parts and materials to further enhance the environmental friendliness of Canon's products. Canon in India is an ISO14001 certified company which offers a feature in its laser printer segment which ensures zero warm up time. This helps the printer to print directly from standby mode, thereby, saving good amount of energy every time one prints from standby mode. The green technologies are also supported by cost effective technologies like Pigment Reactive (PgR) technology and ‘Full-Toner’ capacity. There’re technologies introduced by Canon which help in saving energy and resource consumption which makes our products energy-efficient. Two-sided printing (duplexing) technology by Canon reduces paper usage by almost 50 percent, compact product design from Canon and resized boxes improve shipping efficiency and can help to reduce CO2 emissions. Canon focuses on the development of resource conserving products that are smaller, lighter and easy to recycle. In India, Canon takes responsibility to dispose off ‘end-of-life’ Canon products and other e-waste by sending such waste to government approved recycling agency. Canon’s products come with green technologies like Induction Heating (IH) toner-fixing system which reduces standby time to one-sixth of previous wait time while cutting energy consumption by about 70 per cent compared with conventional systems, On-demand SURF toner-fixing technology which virtually eliminates warm-up time and, depending on the product, enables the fixing unit to achieve standby power consumption of 0W, moulding technology for plastic recycling, usage of bio-based plastic and airshell packaging for toner cartridges.

What are the verticals which have been demanding more of Canon printing products and solutions in India? What is the present marketing strategy of Canon in India?

In spite of slowdown, there’re three verticals which are bound to grow in 2010. First and foremost is government. As government is going to get more effective and there would be wide deployment of e-governance plan in the country. Hence, government would be one of our focused vertical. Also, we see a lot of demand coming in from health, BFSI, telecom and education sector and would continue to explore opportunities across these verticals for 2010. With printing being looked upon as a strategic area that can keep pace with operational day-to-day demands; more and more companies now want to optimize their print infrastructure by using networked printers to save power and space. Looking at this emerging need, Canon has moved into a space of providing the complete solution to the customer in the form of ‘managed print environment’. The benefits of MPS (managed Print Services) are manifold—with no capital expenditure, pay-per-use model, controlled printing costs and not to mention a contribution to a greener environment through more efficient printing practices.
With regard to the marketing strategy we’re currently focusing significantly on Tier-II and Tier-III cities, thereby, reinforcing Canon’s leadership in these markets. Our main focus will be on enhancing returns on investment. Canon believes in enabling connectivity between people, technology and lifestyle. We’ve been focusing on establishing strong infrastructure and have created world class showrooms. We’ve nearly doubled our sales staff from 400 to 730 people, hence one of our foremost focuses in 2010 will be to leverage on this investment and enhance productivity and effectiveness of our people.
To increase penetration in Tier-II & Tier-III markets, Canon has implemented innovative marketing tactics like road-shows and exhibitions to educate and connect with the huge consumer group. Canon has created a new category ‘Digital- OnDemand-Printing’ where we’ve launched new colour presses and have identified business opportunity in areas like photo book printing, and graphic arts segment. We’re also increasing our focus on government sector as e-governance projects have opened up new vistas of opportunity.

Do you think the Government should announce broad-based financial support to troubled SMBs so that they could invest more on IT products and solutions?
The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are aptly regarded as the backbone of the Indian economy. According to the Union Ministry of MSMEs, the ‘micro, small and medium enterprises’ is a sector which contributes up to 40 per cent to the gross industrial manufacturing value added to the economy; 35 per cent to India's exports directly; and around 8 per cent to India's GDP (Gross Domestic Product). With more than 13 million units populated by more than 33 million people, the sector is turning out to be the second largest employer after agriculture. Extra support and priority lending measure will provide MSME sector the right financing and adequate growth opportunities.