Ricoh, a Japan-based company, offers an array of imaging equipment such as MFPs, printers and other hardware for office use including MFPs, printers, interactive white boards, projectors, etc. Minosha India Ltd is the National Distributor for Ricoh in India which independently deals with the distribution and servicing of Ricoh machines. In an interaction with NCN, Mr. Gaurav Sachdeva, HOD – Product & Marketing (Minosha India Ltd), shares about Minosha & Ricoh’s market strategy, their service plans and future goals for the Indian market.
Mr. Gaurav Sachdeva shares, “In 2020, after restructuring and redefining their strategy, Ricoh reentered India through Distribution model. For the next 5 Years, our focus at Minosha will be to re-establish Ricoh as a preferred brand in A3 MFP & Production Printer category while introducing a range of Ricoh Digital Services complementing other product offerings. At Minosha, we have about 250 partners to sell our products. We have over 10,000+ MFPs being directly supported by our strong PAN India service network. About 50% of our business comes thru the channel and the rest 50% from the direct customers. While our Head Office is based out of Delhi, we have 8 offices PAN India to support Direct Operations.”
The A3 copier market was close to 1.5 lakhs units in 2019, it dropped to around 80,000+ in 2020 (due to pandemic). The market recovery has been swift as CY2021 saw the A3 MFP market crossing 1.1 lakh units. The market is expected to attain pre-pandemic levels by end of CY2023.
Mr. Gaurav Sachdeva adds, “Minosha’s USPs are its customer reach and excellent service. Our 250 partners have been with us during the pandemic times, bad times and good times and that is our main strength. Ricoh’s service principles and ethos have been the benchmarks for the whole printing industry. Today, our focus is on A3 and production printers in the Indian market. Ricoh does have a few single-function and multi-function A4 printer models, but we do not want to focus much on the A4 segment. As of now, we have about 700+ Ricoh production printers installed and 12000 A3 printers installed across India directly. Indirectly, through partners, there could be over 200,000 A3 installations. As the market is opening up, in FY2022-23, we want to reach 10% (that is nearly 12K units of A3 printers) market share in A3 copier segment.”
Talking about color printing, Mr. Gaurav Sachdeva elaborates, “The color printing segment has seen steady rise in the last 10 years and now reached about 12%. Further increase in Color Market share could be achieved only by lowering the Color printing cost significantly. Though the color copier costs have come down in last few years, the running costs of color machines are still relatively high—a mono copy costs just 40 paise per page, but it is Rs 4 for a color copy. India being a price-sensitive market would continue to be dominated by mono MFPs in the A3 market space.”
About their future plans, Mr. Gaurav Sachdeva reveals, “This year we want to rejuvenate our partner network and appoint several new partners depending on market & product requirements. We are committed towards establishing our direct presence in 5 new cities every year. We will continue to expand our service network. Starting with FY2022-23, there has been encouraging increasing in the sales of Ricoh A3 copiers. We are sure we will do better in the coming times.”
