Successfully bridges the gap with end customers in understanding their business needs

Photo Credit : Kazutada Kobayashi, president and CEO, Canon India.,

Kazutada Kobayashi, president and CEO, Canon India Pvt Ltd, outlined the recent initiatives being made by the company. The Canon product range is designed to enhance business productivity.

BW CIO: How are Canon products aimed at delivering outstanding business documents, superb usability and workplace productivity?

Kazutada Kobayashi: Canon has evolved as a value provider for complete imaging requirements from input to output management, security through network video surveillance cameras & print security with solutions.

Our product portfolio ranges from A3/A4 multi-function devices, document and cheque scanners, projectors, network video surveillance cameras, solutions and managed document services (MDS) solutions. Our products are technologically superior and designed to enhance business productivity.

With our expansive product portfolio, we offer an umbrella of services like output management, workflow and hardware to organizations in setting up a complete business infrastructure. Our strategies are aligned with our offerings, thus enhancing the overall business productivity of any organization.

With our wide array of offerings across segments, we have always endeavored to simplify innovations for all our stakeholders, from our partners, customers and employees. With the help of our channel partners and direct sales team, we have successfully bridged the gap with our end customers in understanding their business needs.

BW CIO: What is the company's future strategy for this market?

Kazutada Kobayashi: From the input of images to output, we at Canon take pride in taking care of the entire 360-degree offerings, starting with the camera, on to image processing, to printing of pictures. We aim to penetrate further with our complete 360-degree portfolio, contributing to the growth of the imaging culture in the country.

Regional penetration of our products and services will continue to be a core pillar of our strategy for the India market. Our retail expansion with our experiential retail stores, Canon Image Square Version 3.0 will help us double our growth rate.  

Speaking of the camera division, our target is to maintain No. 1 position in DSLR segment and capture more than 50 percent in terms of market share by end of 2018. Our focus will also be on the Cinema EOS and Pro-DV business, and do various activities around the same, to promote and increase the photo culture in the country.

With 'Business Can be Simple', taking the forefront at our enterprise segment, we are taking a step forward in the journey of 'customer delight'. With this customer-centric approach, we aim to intensify our product and service approach towards empowering our customers with effective and easy-to-use solutions, which will support and complement their long-term business objectives.

In the professional printing front, there is an increased focus on the page volume and the cost of printing. In both these categories, we stand out with varied offerings. Moving forward for our laser printer offerings, we envision to further expand our commercial distribution channel and engage with regional system integrators. We will also be levying additional focus on our corporate accounts.

Alongside our continuous innovations and growth in our B2B and B2C segments, I would like to add that we are also heading strongly towards the industrial equipment segment. Our advanced industrial equipment meets the needs of semiconductor and display panel manufacturers, helping connect IT to everyday life. Our industrial equipment will be revolutionizing the manufacturing workplace.

BW CIO: What has been the Business Imaging Solutions (BIS) division’s contribution (in terms of revenues) to the overall Canon India business?

Kazutada Kobayashi: We have always emphasized on offering unparalleled technology through our wide product portfolio to all business entities like large enterprises, SMEs, government sectors, across verticals. Our aim has been to aggressively penetrate the Indian market especially the commercial segment and to increase our share of voice as well as visibility through expansion of our services.

We work cohesively towards providing value offerings to our customers which helps them in increasing their business productivity.

Our BIS division has made a strong foothold in the industry by venturing into new domains and catering to a wide base of customers. Some of the recent innovations and advancements for the division include our showcase of expertise in the digital printing space, with the launch of our third generation imageRUNNER ADVANCE Series, through which we aim to add more ‘colors to India’ and strengthen our mark in the color printing segment.

With these recent advancements, our BIS division is growing massively and we hope to keep up the momentum towards empowering small and medium business enterprises in the country, thereby providing our contribution to an emerging India.

BW CIO: How is the technology evolving in this market and what is the future outlook

Kazutada Kobayashi: There are several areas in which we can expect some new trends, particularly, in imaging technology. We lead the world with our innovative products that realize high-quality images using ground-breaking technologies, such as proprietary lenses, CMOS sensors and image processors.

Continuing to advance the 4K technology with our EOS series, we have maintained our position of innovation and leadership. Live View focusing technology for DSLR camera models will improve. We will see more cameras featuring touchscreen LCDs for an easy user interface. Our ever-improving lens and optics technology also means slimmer cameras with wider zoom ranges. Meanwhile, photo printing is becoming more portable, with Wi-Fi enabled compact printers.

Canon is a leader in imaging solutions and anchors on the belief that business can be simple. Offering a comprehensive suite of print management, document management and workflow solutions, the brand aims to deliver seamless and secure workflows to help companies, large and small, fuel vital growth. India, being one of the key markets, has a huge potential on various aspects.

The number of households are also increasing more than the population. Equipment like cameras and printers should increase in proportion to the number of households, rather than the number of people.

Groups, who can afford such equipment, i.e., mid-income and mid-high-income families, are also increasing. Where the market is at an evolving stage, the demand is definitely going to be stronger and higher.