Epson India: We’ve Become the Market Leader

During his latest visit to India, Minoru Usui, President of Seiko Epson, talked about the company’s pleasing performance in India.

In his interview with CRN, Minoru Usui pointed out Epson’s success in India was led by the success of its Ink Tank printers. “Despite the economic slowdown our Indian operations have grown at 18-20 percent CAGR over the past 2-3 years. In FY2013-14, we recorded revenue of Rs 880 crore compared to Rs 703 crore in FY2012-13. This fiscal we are on track to exceed Rs 1,000 crore, and over the next two fiscals we have a target to cross Rs 1,400 crore,” reviewed Usui. He prided himself on Epson’s ink tank technology, “This technology has drastically reduced the cost per page (CPP). Epson printers based on Ink Tank offer a CPP of 12 paise per page for mono and 25 paise per page for color.”

According to Usui, the growing popularity of Ink Tank technology has boosted Epson’s market share in the global inkjet segment. In India, Epson has emerged as the market leader in the overall inkjet printer category with a value market share of 44%, which worth Rs 314 crore (511.82 million dollars).

Popular in the small business segment, nearly 70% of the Ink Tank printers are sold to the SMB segment while 15% are sold to home consumers and 15% to mid-market and large enterprises.

Minoru Usui said, “We believe there is a huge opportunity which we can tap in the mid-market and large enterprise segments—including PSUs and the government sector—and our initiatives are aimed at achieving these targets. We have set a challenging target of replacing 3 lakh laser printers within these customer segments over the next two years.”

Also, the president noted Epson’s current focus is on consolidating the channel base, aiming to enhance business for existing channel partners with cross-selling opportunities across inkjet, PoS, large format printer, dot matrix printer and projector portfolio. “We have a large focus on education, SMBs and large enterprises for printers and projectors and are devising a vertical-focused approach aligning existing partners with various verticals. We currently have 215 Epson Accredited Partners and about 6,000 Epson Certified Partners whom we are reorganizing as per their segment focus. So far we have identified 70 partners for education, 450 partners focused on SMBs, 100 Pro-AV partners for projectors and 70 home theater projector partners,” revealed Usui.