Canon rides high, crosses Rs 2,000-cr mark

Targets double-digit growth from DSLRs, copiers

Marquee Japanese brand Canon’s India operations have crossed the Rs 2,000-crore revenue mark for the first time by ending calendar 2014 with revenues of Rs 2,026 crore. 

In an interaction with Deccan Herald, Canon India President and CEO Kazutada Kobayashi said it hopes to hit double-digit growth in 2015. Canon India operates in five verticals — office imaging products (OIP, for copiers), image communication products (ICP, for cameras), consumer system products (CSP, for home printers), professional printing products (PPP, for business printers), and a software development centre (SDC).  

While OIP grew 6 per cent in 2014 to around Rs 500 crore, ICP grew 8 per cent to around Rs 960 crore. CSP contribution crawled 2 per cent to Rs 450 crore, while PPP saw 30 per cent growth, albeit on a smaller base, to around Rs 100 crore.

On digital cameras, which is a B2C segment, Kobayashi said the market is “ divided between compact and Digital SLR (DSLR) cameras. In india, the market size for digital compact cameras is 36 lakh and Canon's share is 30 per cent,” he said.

He said Canon wants its high quality DSLR cameras to tap the market for the subset of smartphone users who demand higher picture quality. For this, Canon is betting big on its chain of Image Square stores which will not only sell cameras and accessories, but also educate customers.

“We started off this initiative in 2010 and have till now opened 130 shops on the franchisee model. Ten of them are in Bengaluru. We hope to scale them to 300 by next year,” he said.

Kobayashi said the Indian DSLR camera market size was an estimated 13 lakh units, of which Canon has around 50 per cent share. The rest of the market has been cornered by rival Nikon.

Though the DSLR market size is small, per unit margins are high due to higher camera prices, Kobayashi said. Canon is also betting on DreamLabo machine installations for large-scale printing of albums, aimed at the wedding market. Each of these installations cost Rs 4.5 crore.

“We are promoting our colour copiers as prices are becoming reasonable. We are also solving file management using uniFLOW software. It will maintain confidentiality by releasing copies only on the swipe of a card. We have a cloud service to warehouse documents,” he said.

Canon has 25 per cent of the copier market, and 20 per cent of printers , Kobayashi said.