After the successful launch of its all-in-one laser printers, Panasonic's morale has gotten a major boost in India. Though Panasonic is known more for its fax machines and communication devices, Anai felt that it is the right time to offer customers more functionality products

Panasonic is known for its communication devices. But recently it has launched new models of all-in-ones (AIO). Does this signal a shift in your business models?
Yes, it is true that Panasonic essentially provides all communication products like mobiles and PBX among others. But as far as the launch of multi-functional devices (MFD) is concerned, we see huge growth potential in the market for such products. Hence, we introduced these in India.

We have a strong brand share in the mobiles and fax market. But with the change in techno­logy, companies are willing to buy products that will help them do things faster and in a much more advanced fashion. Besides, they are also looking for user-friendly products.

This is precisely why we launched the MB series. The three new products include seven-in-one (KX-FLB882CX), five-in-one (KX-MB772CX) and three-in-one (KX-MB262CX).

With these products, we will be looking to target small and medium corporates, SOHO segment and the public sector units, since these machines have printing, copying, scanning and faxing features in one machine. It will help customers reduce their total cost of ownership and lead to enhanced performance.

We launched our laser AIO last year, and going by the feedback we have received, we decided to expand our product line. In addition to this, we will be offering triple packed toners with these machines that will further help in bringing down the cost per page substantially.

Kenji Anai GM, Panasonic Communications Company

Does these mean that Panasonic will be regularly launching more printer models in India?
Yes, we should be launching three to four printers in the next fiscal. We have the A3 category also which is the heavy duty and we are promoting the same under the brand name Panasonic Workio. This is actually a digital AIO or an MFD.

So the key differentiation between what we are launching today and those heavy duty products is that the latter are truly for the corporate and it involves centralized printing room, mail room etc.

Thus, these machines are basically copier machines. Both function in the similar fashion, but the technology is different. While one has the printing machine, the other has the copier machine. Which is why the MD series we launched recently are the first of it's kind from Panasonic.

We will be looking at printing copy volume of not less than 50,000 per month. Besides, we will also launch color MFDs in the near future.

Are you going to price these products differently for the Indian market?
India is a very price-sensitive market and keeping the same in mind, we have slightly lowered the prices of our products compared to our global prices. The reason behind this is that
we want to target the right custo­mers.

But for other products that we will launch sometime later, we will not lower the price and try to keep it consistent. We will try to give more kickback to our channel partners and our end-users.

What about post-sales support? What is the infras­tructure you will invest in?
We get the servicing done through our 250 authorized service centers. We feel that service is one of the most important aspect of this business, so we expect our dealers to give products to our customers, install the same at their place and then provide the post-sales servicing if needed. We include this costing within our margin structure, because partners already have the customer.

Our dealers are supposed to give onsite warranty to custo­mers. In case there is something seriously wrong with the product, then customers can bring the machine to our service center. We already have a good channel network in A-class cities in India. Now we are looking at having more dealers in B and C-class cities.

What is your USP for getting more dealers to sell your products?
We are not looking to get into the price war and we offer good margins to our partners to start business with us. We want them to understand that we are moving into the printer business category, and so far, the channel response has been really good.

We have been doing a number of dealer meets in metro cities. This will continue for the next few months.

During these dealer meets we educate partners. We want to bring these dealers under one roof and will conduct events to build a healthy relation­­ship with them. Right now, our dealers know us for our products like fax, consumer and communication products. We are still growing in the printer business. Hence, we are inviting these people repeatedly so that a paradigm shift takes place.

What is your channel structure for IT products?
We appoint partners directly. Unisec Systems is our national distributor. We call them Super Distributors and they have there own channel partners who again target the end-users. As of now, we are very happy with Unisec and don't plan to appoint another national distributor.

You don't have an IT manufacturing facility in India yet. Why?
We have a manufacturing set-up in India. But this is not for our printer products; it is for home appliances. As of now, we don't have plans to manufacture printers in India. Our manufac­turing set ups are located in countries like Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia, and they all manufacture different products for Panasonic. These are then imported to emerging markets like India.

Now that you have expanded your product portfolio, what are your expectations from the market?
The printing industry already has leaders like HP, Samsung, etc. We are looking at competing with them. They already have a strong presence and under­standing of printer products. On the other hand, we have been always recognized as a communication company because our strong background is in telephone and other communication products.

So our marketing strategy is very simple. Firstly, we will have the right product and then we will look at positioning it in the market. We will also launch interesting incentive-based schemes for our partners so that they can maintain a strong customer base.

Besides, we are looking at offering free toners and bundling other features. India is one of the fastest growing markets for us, especially for all-in-one printers, and in Asia, it is actually number one for us.

Pooja Sharma
poojas@cybermedia.co.in

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