'We're Deeply Focused on Introducing Low-Cost Mono Laser and Color Inkjet MFPs for Indian SMEs'

1.With such well-established players enjoying a lion's share of the Indian market, how do you plan to make your presence felt?

We know the competition is intense here and it is indeed difficult to convince customers to shift loyalties from the established vendors. So, it all starts with having a happy bunch of customers. Those that are enjoying the quality of our products and their reliability. Having said that, we have also decided to increase our focus on introducing India-centric products that provide low-cost prints through lower cost printers and cartridges yet provide higher volumes. Most cartridges from competition have a consolidated toner and drum unit. Our cartridges separate the toner from the drum. This saves costs as a new cartridge shall print 1500 pages before replacement while the drum can go on upto 10,000 pages. Also, our MFPs are now rugged enough to withstand dust and the inferior quality paper generally used in Indian SMEs.

2.There have been issues regarding the quality of service offered to your customers or rather the lack of it. How do you rectify that?

Previously we had provision for servicing a customer upto a max 40 km from his place of work. But this has now been effectively reduced to 'zero' as we offer onsite service for all our products. We have beefed up our service network to 180 service centers in 70 key cities across India.

3.Apart from resolving these issues, what additional features have you incorporated in your printers to allure customers?

All our printers are designed at Brother R&D centers in Japan and manufactured in China and Vietnam. Most competition vendors source their designs from other organisations. So we have precise control over what we offer. For instance, our MFPs feature a double-roller mechanism with extra long paper tray. This makes for smooth paper movement inside the printer and saves precious time which is otherwise wasted clearing paper jams. Also, the life of our roller is more as compared to competition. Also, we've observed that ID card printing is a key requirement in India. So, we've introduced a smart ID copy feature that lets you take both the front and back images on the same sheet without re-inserting it.

4.What are your targets as far as market share in India is concerned?

Right now we have a 5% market share of the overall Indian printer market. Within this the single function printer occupies an 80% share. We plan to increase our footprint in parts and the first step towards that is to achieve 10% of the overall market share in mono laser MFPs by March 2015.