Canon invests Rs 100 crore in rental businesses

New Delhi: During its third event of the year held in New Delhi, Canon made a few major announcements and launched a range of new products globally in the BIS and B2B segments.

The vendor has invested Rs 100 crore in the B2B rental business and launched Image Press 1135, a document software solution, which can be utilized in the commercial printing segment. Canon has also introduced 80 Business Imaging Products and has introduced Mono-Digital Production Printing Press in this segment.

Kensaku Konishi, President and CEO , Canon India shared, "Canon has done intensive study and research of its potential growth among its probable users before launching Image Press 1135, which is high-end and quiet expensive. After the study, we found that there's an existing need of 100 such machines per year. We understand that corporates will have many doubts initially, but we are sure that these new introductions will be accepted widely in the industry."

Canon will be selling Canon Image Press 1135 directly and there will be no channel partner involvement initially, but Alok Bharadwaj, Sr VP, Canon India expressed the minor possibility of involving channel partners in later stages. Canon is investing heavily on the marketing activities of this product. He assured that the company will be completely taking care of the post-sales services to its clients, providing trainings to them on how to use the machine and utilizing its applications. There would also be a full-time engineer from Canon to assist to its clients. A team of 80 sales people in Direct Sales Business division will be handling top 500 corporates and commercial print segments in India.

The MRP of this product is Rs 44 lakh. Being an expensive product, Canon has also provided the facility to its users of paying the amount in installments. The product is also available on rental basis, hence it is fondly called as 'Opex-ing Investments' by Canon. Bharadwaj shared that this leasing plan is designed to assist the the companies to adopt latest document management technologies without having to invest upfront.

Image Press 1135 is likely to print 135 pages per minute and can give one lakh black and white prints a day. It can be used in printing manuals and docs, transactional businesses, book production, and can also be used in applications like large-scale bill printing. Canon is targeting segments like telecom, publishing, BFSI and education as its potential buyers.

The company expects this rental business to contribute about 60 percent to its enterprise B2B and B2Commercial business. Canon hopes to increase its marketshare by 10 percent this year and 20 percent in 2010 by the launch of these products.

Canon also announced that that even during slowdown, the company has attained 22 percent overall growth during Jan-April 2009. It claims to have generated highest ever sales of Rs 70 crore in March 09, with 34 percent growth only in the month of April this year.