Indian printer market has been growing tremendously since last few years. Apart from other factor, Digital India mission has been key for this outstanding growth in recent times. There are many brands who are giving tough competition to each other. But when it comes to production and office segment, Konica Minolta is a true leader in Indian market.
The company has grown their market share from single digit and double digit in a very small time duration. Now the brand is maintaining its leadership position by offering excellent products and best service support to their customers. Mr. V Balakrishnan, Executive General Manager, Konica Minolta Business Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. shares his vision and thought in an exclusive interaction with DT on overall growth of the company since they started business in India.
DT: How do you see overall growth of Konica Minolta’s Business in India?
Mr. Balakrishnan: In 2010 when Konica Minolta came, we had about 2.8% or 3% market share. But today we have 24% market share combining both production and office. For us when it comes to revenue, both of that segment give us almost equal revenue. Konica Minolta is a leader in production and office printing solutions. In production market, it is our responsibility to ensure that we continue to work and grow in the market. In last 5 months, we are growing in both segment and we assure to have encouraging growth year-on-year.
DT: How do you make sure that your devices are very much secured?
Mr. Balakrishnan: Our all printers are very much secured and that has been one of the standard features of our offerings. Currently we are using one of the secured technology in our printers. Our printers are equipped with way-in reader to access. A way-in reader is a device that, unless you physically walk-up to the device, put your finger into the way-in reader only then it will release a print for you. This security feature has been key agenda for us while manufacturing printers especially in a financial institutions and now it’s available on our platform across. So when a buyer trust us and buy our products, we assure to give them full secured device.
DT: How do you able to maintain leadership position in production printing solution?
Mr. Balakrishnan: When Konica Minolta came-in in 2010, the size for production printer in India was around 400 unit. Last fiscal it was almost 1100 and we have sold almost 600 of them. Today I would say almost 60% of our customers in production printing are first time entrepreneurs, they started with us, they entered this field and they have done tremendously well. We introduced big change in printing of wedding albums as well. This has been a game changer and today I can say that almost 50% of all the albums printed in India, printed on Konica Minolta platform. It has been also a tremendous revenue booster or for our customers. In production, when we sell a press and someone puts up Konica Minolta press, he is putting up for creating and running his business. When you are running your business, your production uptime is very important. So to boost excellent support today we provide service at more than 46 locations in India. More satisfying has been the growth our customers have achieved while trusting our brand and they have grown from one shop to multi location outlets. That has been perhaps the most rewarding for Konica Minolta that all of us have been able to create new value, create work not for ourselves but for entire ecosystem for everybody connected with us.
DT: How do you maintain very healthy relationships with your channel partners?
Mr. Balakrishnan: Konica Minolta has globally grown by creating new value not just for itself but also for our entire partner ecosystem. In India also we came and started building robust partner network. As of today, we have almost150 key partners and I would say most of them have been with us ever since they came on board. This is because they work with most channel friendly organization in the world. Apart from best sales and technical support, we provide all sort of training required for them to grow in value chain which no other organizations offer to their partners. With growing days, we have been able to maintain very honest and healthy relation with our partners across India.
