For printer major, devil is indeed in details

The Japanese firm has set its sights on TN’s promising home and office market, where it hopes to make a lasting impression. 

As per FutureSource Consulting, Epson is the No 1 brand with a market share of 27.6% In India. It has been the No 1 projector brand worldwide (for the last sixteen years), with a market share of close to 35.6%. Toshiyuki Kasai, President, Epson India, gets talking on the plans going forth.

Since the beginning, Tamil Nadu has been one of our most critical markets. Over the past few years, we have witnessed a very good growth and have successfully created an excellent network in the state through our established set of channel partners. 

Retail trends have always started first in the TN market. We have noticed a huge increase in the consumption of POS printers post the implementation of GST. We have also seen a noticeable trend in people shifting from cartridge and laser to InkTank printers for the cost and quality benefits.  

We see great demand for interactive projectors which are being widely used in educational institutions and data projectors which are used in offices. The home theatre segment is also gaining momentum and we expect to see more progress in this market in the coming years.  

There was a desperate market need for low cost and affordable printing solutions in India. Consumers were fed up with having to pay exorbitant amounts for ink cartridges and consequently for each print as well as the maintenance cost of the printers. 

We took a bold step to change the dynamics of the printer market way back in 2011. We amped up the price of the main unit and reduced the recurring or running cost to a negligible amount. 

The InkTank technology guarantees improvements in cost efficiency with per page prints. The refillable ink reduces cost of printing to just 7 paisa per page for black prints, and 18 paisa per page for colour. 

Consumers appreciate printing being made so inexpensive. We shifted all our erstwhile cartridge based models to InkTank printers within a year. 

From penetrating into the 3 keys segments: commercial, home and office to rolling out an expansive range of InkTank printers, Epson moved fast and had a free run of the market for 5 years. Competing brands are now attempting to penetrate the market with 1st generation InkTank printers of their own.

The driver of Epson’s growth in India and across the world is its proprietary 3LCD technology which delivers up to three times higher colour brightness than competing brands of projectors.  

The home and SOHO market account for 75% of the Inkjet market. Families, especially those with school going children, have more printing requirements. 

They have realized the cost benefits of using InkTank printers as compared to a laser/cartridge based printing model. According to IDC, there has been a surge in this category of target audience and we are actively targeting such home users. 

For projectors, we see great potential in the education, corporate and SMB segment. The concept of digital classrooms, short throw and ultra-short throw interactive projectors will gain even further popularity this year.