Tonner
Drums
Cartridges

Genuine Canon copier toners insure that your Canon product runs without any glitches and the reproduction quality does not suffer. Canon copier drums are the actual mechanism by which the toner gets transferred on to the paper for the reproduction of text and images. Canon copier cartridges are marked by their distinctive packaging and may contain just the toner or the drum or be combination of both.

Demand Analysis : -

Though the demand for paper oriented office equipment products like facsimile, photocopiers, and printers is considered to be on the decline with the advent of Internet and efficient electronic data transfer, marketers are ruling out the possibility of a paperless office in India and see a huge potential for their product range. The drivers for demand are:

Government: Government organizations are large buyers of copiers, as the bulk of their daily work requires complex documentation. Most of these organizations are over staffed, and thus generate large quantities of hand-written paper, copies of which have to be stored in multiple locations. Also Government organizations haven't yet responded in earnest to electronic documents and thus have not seen a considerable decrease in copier demand. The potential for copiers is relatively high in this segment as a typical Government firm seems to have a need for decentralized copiers (a separate copier for each department).

Service Industry: Among the non-government organizations, the most paper oriented is the service industry, like banks, which requires a greater degree of documentation. However, this market is declining steadily.

Jobbers : This is the segment of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).  It comprises both corner shop photocopying services and full-fledged documentation management centers, servicing retail customers.  Metros and active business areas have a high concentration of Jobbers, who service the retail customers. Copier companies consider this segment as steadily growing in size, and hence are setting up business centers and franchisees to meet the documentation needs of the retail customer.

Corporate: This is an important segment for any marketer  (comprises IT and non-IT companies: both MNCs and non-MNCs). This segment is characterized by a comparatively higher penetration of the Internet.  Therefore, to survive in this segment, any marketer needs to be customer service oriented as well as quick enough to introduce the latest technology to meet ever-changing end-user requirements.
This segment, typically, seeks for a multi-task device that can design, transmit, store, retrieve, colour, print, copy, merge, scan, and fax etc. The Digital range of copiers (multi-task / multi-functional ones) are likely to have a great potential in this segment. Increasing market pressures have led to slicker advertisements, brochures, user's manuals, and proposals, which in turn have influenced the demand for colour copiers.  As against the rest of the user segments, both the colour and digital copier segment are growing in this segment.

COMPETITORS : -

The Copier market, product per se, gets classified into two basic categories, i.e. Analog and Digital. While Analog copiers are Black & White machines, the Digital range comes in both B&W and Colour. Analog copiers, still, account for the majority of the market, i.e. 90-95%, while the Digital range is at its nascent stage.  The market is equally split between the black & white and colour copiers, with the latter gaining ground recently. Digital copier, unlike Analog, can be upgraded to local printer, fax system, scanner, so that it can be used for network printing, sending facsimiles, scanning etc.
As per the product architecture, the market falls into three categories.  They are basically low-end, mid-end and high-end copiers. The low-end of the market comprises both personal and low-volume machines, where the copying volume, typically, would be in the range of 5,000-10,000 copies/month.  While the mid-end copiers are used to copy 10,001-30,000 in a month. The high-end copiers are capable of delivering more than 30,000 copies in a month.

Xerox ModiCorp (formerly Modi Xerox), generic to photo copiers, has a dominant presence with 50-60% of the market share in black and white copiers and an even more stunning 70% market share in color copiers.  Canon, having entered the Indian market in 1997, has been very aggressive in its approach and cornered about 18%.  The company's competitive pricing policy has impacted the overall margins of the copier market adversely. Canon is followed by Gestetner (Ricoh), HCL Toshiba and Kilburn Reprographics. While Ricoh is quite well known for its being an aggressive price warrior, Gestetner intends to further strengthen its dominance in Government Organizations and aims to become a production base for its parent company.

Modi Xerox

Dr. B.K. Modi, who inherited a vast commodity business from his father Gujari Lal Modi, with technical and financial collaboration with Rank Xerox, UK (part of Xerox Corp USA), launched Modi Xerox in 1983. The commercial production of photocopiers commenced in 1985 in a plant setup in Rampur, UP. The plant was awarded ISO-9002 certification in '92. Recently, Modi Xerox re-invented itself as Xerox ModiCorp. Xerox now has 68% stake in the venture, and is aiming at a 100% ownership of the firm. Dr. B.K. Modi is still the chief of the venture, but is playing a diminishing role in the venture. In the early 90s, ModiCorp emerged as a vast conglomerate of the top office equipment brands in the world like Xerox, Alcatel, Olivetti and GBC.  Notable among the problems that plagued Modi Xerox was the consistent depletion of in-house talent, but the company is eyeing the future optimistically, looking to leverage converging technologies.

Xerox with a turnover of about Rs.490 crore, has established itself as the leading photocopier company in the country with a 58% market share. It plays a significant role in associated office equipment segments such as facsimile also with a market share of 25%. Xerox intends to adopt a holistic approach to manage a document in this age of convergence.  This is truly depicted in shifting its positioning from a `document company' to the `digital document company', to go digital. Xerox has set up a Xerox Business Services division through which it provides complete document management services. Firms can outsource all their document requirement through XBS, which will ascertain the client's needs, set up the required machines at client's premises, along with manpower, supplies such as paper, cartridges and any other required services. XBS also undertakes activities like scanning and digitizing documents, such as old court records (this is a project that they have undertaken in Bangalore) and storing them in an efficient database.

The company offers a wide range of copiers, which are available within the price range of Rs.45,000 – Rs.1.5 crore. This range encompasses low-end entry-level personal copiers, mid-end, and high-end sophisticated machines. Having established firmly its presence in the government sector initially, Xerox has now become particularly strong in the corporate segment. However, the company intends to expand its opportunity in the business enterprises segment, i.e. Jobbers. Xerox adopts both the direct and indirect mode of approaching the market, in order to achieve larger presence in the market.  The company has an extensive distribution across the country, with over 300 branch outlets / service centers in all major business centers in India.  Most of the machines sold by Xerox have maintenance and service contracts with the company leading to substantial service revenues, with around 30% of the total corporate revenue being accounted for by service incomes.

On the production side, Xerox has been consistently indigenizing the components of the photocopiers, thus investing its Indian operations with export potential. Rampur is one of the only three fully backward integrated plants worldwide for Xerox, with manufacturing facilities for Photoreceptor, Dry powder toner / developer, consumables and various other components.

Gestetner

Gestetner (India) Ltd., achieved a turnover of Rs 62 crore in 1998 and pushed it up to Rs 72 crore in 1999.  In 2000, GIL stated that its strategy would be to strengthen its marketing focus and target a wide marketing area from their high-end product users to rural markets.
Gestetner Holdings Plc, UK, holds 51 per cent in Gestetner India, and is itself a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese office automation major Ricoh. World across, Gestetner Holdings Plc, UK, has been a major marketing channel for Ricoh's high-end office automation products, with Ricoh's own marketing network in Europe competing with Gestetner UK's channels which markets the same Ricoh products under its own brand name. In India, Ricoh markets its products through GIL and its other subsidiary, Ricoh India (formerly RPG Ricoh). However, there is hardly any product overlap between the two and GIL operates as the channel for high-end duplicators from the Ricoh stable currently being marketed in the country.

Gestetner has been in the country since 1924, and its presence predominantly has been in the duplicating machines. Their marketing efforts have long been aimed at the Government firms/organizations and educational institutions.  About one and a half years ago, it has entered the copier market (the latest entrant). It is the first company to launch digital copiers in the country and it markets digital range of copiers only. The company asserts that its core competence lies in providing the cheapest copying solution, i.e. laser print at a cost of a photocopy.
GIL also has a manufacturing capacity of 14000 units in Calcutta's Salt Lake City, which has been awarded ISO 9002 certification in 1997. However, things are not at their best at the plant, besotted with labor problems, and the management is looking at downsizing its thousand strong workforce in the current year.

GIL has a wide range of digital copiers priced between Rs.83,000 – Rs.15 lakhs.  The company is targeting its digital copiers mainly at the private sector that comprises IT, MNCs and other corporate houses. The company offers an exclusive copier range for their government clients. Company claims to have one of the fastest machines like `Digital Copy Printer', which can print 120 prints in a minute directly from the computer, at the lowest cost per copy/print. GIL believes in introducing only a few  specific international models (R&D efforts are based in UK), which are likely to gain acceptance in the country.

Gestetner sold around 5242 copier machines in 1998, with an average realization of around 15000 per machine, and is targeting to sell around 12000 units per annum on a regular basis, with a good chunk coming from the South East Asian and African markets. With strong distribution and marketing plans, Gestetner looks well on its way to its target with a first quarter sale of 3000 units. However, whether they would be able to keep up the performance levels would depend to a large extent on the global market leader Canon and Indian market leader Xerox.  GIL has a network of 37 sales and customer-care locations in the country.

Gestetner is also looking at considerable growth in the components market as well, as the group company, Ricoh India sources out most of the components it requires for manufacturing copiers, importing around 65% of the components. It could be a win-win situation for both the companies if Gestetner were to supply components to Ricoh India - it will contribute to higher sales for Gestetner and fits with GIL's plans of exporting from India, and Ricoh will be protected from adverse exchange fluctuations and can reduce their order lead times.

Targeting an ambitious turnover of Rs 100 Crore in the year 2000 (up from Rs 64 crores in 1999), Gestetner India Ltd has chalked out a fourfold strategy:

HCL Toshiba (represents Office equipment sub-group of HCL Infosystems), is another new entrant in the Indian copier market.   This company belongs to the HCL, a corporate giant (worth Rs.3,000 crore) in the IT industry.  HCL Infosystems, initially has a manufacturing base for copiers in technical collaboration with Toshiba, which was terminated about five years ago.  Post-liberalisation, the company switched over to a much more cost-effective approach of marketing Toshiba range of copiers in India.  This move, from the company's point of view, enabled it to bring in the latest international technology, swifter than its competition. The company opines that its mission of treating India an important market (though it has lower penetration of copiers) on par with other countries in terms of launching the latest technology (instead of machines with outdated technology, refurbished/reconditioned machines), has played a key role in its strong customer franchise (satisfied repeat-buyers and loyal customers) base.

HCL-Toshiba's copier range comes with the latest International technology, differentiated and user friendly features, for instance, Duplexing (Back-to-back) in Analog copiers, Uniform processing speed in the mid-range of copiers (irrespective of the size of paper fed), and the least `first copy out time' etc.

High performance has been the core strength of HCL Toshiba range of copiers.  Users of HCL Toshiba show strong brand loyalty towards the brand, which is reflective of performance of the machine. Analog range of copiers from HCL Toshiba is available in the price range of Rs.70,000-Rs.10 lakhs upwards, while the Digital range (B & W) is priced within Rs.3 lakhs – Rs.15 lakh and the Digital range (Colour) priced within Rs.15 lakhs – Rs.35 lakhs. The company claims that its complete product range is backed with the latest technology of OPC (Organic Photo Conductor) as against the Selenium technology, which is more or less outdated. Kilburn Reprographics Kilburn Reprographics has recently tied up with Wipro Peripherals to boost its distribution strength. Kilburn, which has around 8% market share in the copier market, is known for the high quality of its products and is known to sell mainly to larger firms. End users of Kilburn range of copiers also exhibit high level of loyalty to the brand.

Segmentation:

Canon photocopiers are available in a number of different form factors ranging from the industrial grade copiers that take up entire bays to the average home user's Canon color copier that is optimized for the desktop environment with space constraints. The digital models of canon color photocopiers have the ability to be connected to the computer networks of a user which greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the office. These copiers go a long way in contributing positively to the total out put at the work place. Canon color copiers can also be specialized for color reproduction, and as an aid to graphics enhancements.  The Cannon photocopier product can be classified into two basic categories, i.e. Analog and Digital. While Analog copiers are Black & White machines, the Digital range comes in both B&W and Colour.

Though the photocopiers are the paper oriented office equipment products , Cannon has segmented its market into Office automation segment. Though the small office segment (SOHO – Small Office Home Office) is largely a Printer-oriented one, it offers a good potential for combo machines that can print and copy, and multi-task / functional copiers. It is amongst all user segments

Targeting :

Canon Photocopiers has targeted the following sector for their product according to their usage and advancement :  Government , Service Industry , Jobbers , Corporate , and Small Offices. In almost all the establishment stated above requires more filling and keeping of paper work.

Positioning :

Canon Photocopiers are eco-friendly technologies in India, where a majority of machines are still Selenium based. Canon deployed Service Edge, a customer-care solution (helps to minimize breakdowns and reduce cycle times), which helps it to provide better customer support and enables customer to be proactive.

There are some of the External Factor which can make effect of the Cannon Photocopiers : -

The Political environment at the time of Canon's entry in 1997 was stable. Though the government was a coalition, yet it was pro-liberalisation. This spelt stability on the economic policies front and thus the political environment was conducive to investment.

Economic environment in India, too was very healthy. The new economic policies were pro-investment. Deregulation, and liberalization of Industrial Licensing had already taken place. FERA was liberalised which meant that foreign investment and technology import were made easier. Fiscal and monetary reforms were in the pipeline and pointed towards a bright future. Public sector participation was being abetted by the government. All in all, the economic environment, too was ripe.

Social environment in India was a mixed bag. Though the middle class was burgeoning, yet the population below the poverty line was a concern. A major part of the Indian population lived in small villages which did not even have access to electricity. However, the social environment was not of much of a concern to the firm.