“We Boast of One of The Best Customer Service Network In India's Printing Industry Segment”

“We Boast of One of The Best Customer Service Network In India's Printing Industry Segment”

Indian printing industry is one of the world’s leading market for all global vendors. They all have specific plans and team for Indian market to grab this enormous opportunities. Konica Minolta has been able to dominate the Indian printing market since they started their operation in year 2010. The brand has maintained its leadership position by offering excellent products for offices, corporate house and large printers across the country. They also witnessed a significant response for their professional Production Printers in India this year which helped them to retain their leadership.The company with its high quality printing solutions, particularly for SMBs, offers unmatched customer service in India. With ‘Digital Printing’ being the next big thing in the country’s printing space, the company is committed to fetch help businesses transit smoothly from conventional printing to digital printing. Kuldeep Malhotra, Vice President, Konica Minolta Business Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. interacted with DT and outlined his successful journey in year 2017 and also shared his upcoming channel plans.

DT: What have been the crucial milestones of your company during year 2017?

Mr. Kuldeep: We have been serving Indian market and creating a wide range of Printing & document solutions requirement for Indian Corporate Customers. In 2016-17 Konica Minolta sold over 20,000 units of B&W and around 2400 units in colour segment. We target to increase these numbers in the coming years to increase our market share. We achieved first milestone of 500 crore revenue in 2016-17 and our target is to increase our double-digit growth YOY.

DT: What were the major challenges for your company? How did you fight those challenges?

Mr. Kuldeep: We plan to increase the number of our partners in the coming year as well as focus more aggressively on training programmes to help them understand the challenges and opportunities prevailing in the market. In the beginning there are some hiccups in the market due to demonetization in November since most of the customers were in PFP segment.

DT: How GST changed your business affair in year 2017? What were your preparations to adopt this biggest tax reform? 

Mr. Kuldeep: GST has brought a uniform tax structure for businesses in India which is helping them to improve on their productivity as well as turnaround time. We can now focus more on innovation as well as expanding our penetration in the country as tax related hurdles have been eliminated.

DT: How do you assure your customer excellent service support? What are your investments plans to enhance service support infrastructure to cover entire India?

Mr. Kuldeep: We boast of one of the best customer service network in India's printing industry segment to ensure that our esteemed customer fetch last mile customer service support in the country. We plan to invest a significant chunk of our revenue in further bolstering our customer service network via strategic tie ups and collaboration as this comes as one of our key USPs.

DT: Please share your current revenue and market growth rate. What is target for year 2018?

Mr. Kuldeep: The Indian printing industry is increasingly being driven by growth in packaging and labels. The print media also continues to grow at a healthy annual pace of four percent. As its growth trends continue to be well over the world averages, in print volume terms, India are set to become the fifth largest market by 2018 moving up largest market by 2018 moving up five notches from its present tenth slot.We at Konica Minolta are growing significantly in India and target to increase our numbers in the coming years. We achieved first milestone of 500 crore revenue in 2016-17 and our target is to increase our double-digit growth YOY. 

DT: What’s your channel strength currently in India? How do you plan to boost channel strength in year 2018? 

Mr. Kuldeep: We have 180 + partners across India. We will focus on strategic tie-ups with new partners across India who can help their customers by offering the most relevant printing solutions to them. We will also organize workshops and training sessions on a regular basis to train our new as well as existing partners about the changing dynamics of the Indian printing segment. 

DT: What will be your key Go-To-Market Strategy for the year 2018? 

Mr. Kuldeep: We are a partner-driven company and our foremost focus would be to penetrate new untapped regions in India via roping in new channel partners. We will also focus aggressively on digital industrial printing solutions to meet the new age demands, involving high volume jobs and quality printing in India.Our focus is growing more on SMB & Corporate segment under Make in India & other Digital initiatives by government. The key focus is to provide solutions along with MFP to our existing and new customers. 

DT: What will be major products you will be launching in year 2018? Which will be your key target market? 

Mr. Kuldeep: We will be launching new models in both Black & white and colour. Keeping in view our current strength in jobbers & SMB corporate. Colour will be our focus since colourization is increasing YOY. Some of the key verticals which we will focus on include- Information Technology, BFSI, Healthcare, Hospitality, Government etc.

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