In a talk with PRESSIdeas, Sambit Misra, shares his views on the vast opportunities presented by Digital Printing, reaching to the top and other things including the huge wastage in Print.
Last year saw a lot of dramatic changes in the field of Digital Production Printing. The key being Monotech-Konica Minolta merger and Xerox’s comeback. For Ricoh, the year brought significant growth in every segment. “We have grown at 60-70 percent last year,” says Sambit Misra.The growth is significant, given the industry average growth of around 5 percent. Despite this growth, the profitability for Ricoh has dropped. The reasons for this drop, according to Sambit, have been increased competition, more products as well as diversified demand from the customers. He says that the Digital market seems to be at a stage of bottoming out. “Looking at it with a digital perspective, there is so much which can be done at the lower end of the market which hasn’t been addressed yet,” he says.
Obviously, the machine with white and clear capabilities has far wider range of applications. Above all, it generated a new range of media that no more needed to be ‘only white’. It actually kick started a new market looking for green, black or red etc. papers.” – Sambit Misra, Ricoh India
The two main reasons for low profitability have been put as – “It is difficult to keep profitability up because the customers are not ready to change price point due to competition; and the dollar has been hitting us hard.” He sums up the whole last year as one of ‘high growth, less revenues and less profitability’.
Ricoh high-speed engine for high-end Digital print market
Ricoh portfolio, over the last two year, has extended to new dimensions. At the start of the year 2015, Ricoh came out with a 5-colour engine. The only 5-colour available with white option in the market then wasn’t much successful. “Ours was a differentiated product for which we didn’t have to compete with most of the competitor products,” explains Sambit.There were other machines that offered gold and silver capabilities. “Since they too were meant for a totally different market – photographic and marriage albums etc., they were not in direct competition with the Ricoh machine;whereas, ours was a machine with white and clear capabilities and suited to the demands of the corporate market.Obviously, the machine with white and clear capabilities has far wider range of applications.Above all, it generated a new range of media that no more needed to be ‘only white’. It actually kick started a new market looking for green, black or red etc. papers,” he continues.
Until recently, Ricoh was not addressing the high-end market. But, with the bringing in of machines with 130 ppm to 150 ppm engines, it has now opened new doors for big-volume market.This big-volume market has largely been answered by machines meant for the VDP market and didn’t met the specific criteria of the Graphic Arts market. With the new launch, Ricoh offers a product which specifically answers the needs of the Graphic Arts market. “The product comes at 1/3rdthe price of popular products, produce excellent colours and has cheaper cost per page,” says Sambit.
The first installation of Ricoh 9100 at Surat has been quite successful. The site has produced 18,00,000 A4 impressions in 40 days. The machine has become a product of choice for printers. “Since they couldn’t log their existing machines for more than 3-3.5 lakh print volumes, now they had a real high-volume machine. They now don’t have to go for multiple units and can just have a single high-volume Ricoh engine,” says Sambit. The machine also offered banner printing option, which was another feature that put it above competitive products. Above all, it was the only machine in the market which could print 400 gsm. “Those markets have high demand for brochure printing which makes it a very attractive solution as a printer of a wide array of substrates,” adds Sambit. This has also opened new avenues for the digital printing, which was not earlier catering to these segments. The segments include customers from the textile and packaging industry. “The packaging customers weren’t satisfied earlier with even up to 350 gsm capabilities. But now with 400 gsm, we have been producing dummies effectively to the full satisfaction of these customers,” claims Sambit. “This demand was answered by UV flatbed machines which have high cost of operation. With this Ricoh machine, however, clients can have multiple dummies at lesser cost,” he adds.
Ricoh has also opened up the Photo printing market. “We are doing fairly good in the photo market. We already have 20 print engines installed. The tie-up with Jindal Photo is also going well. We are also opening up more photographic channels this year,” hints Sambit.
Sambit has handled Graphic Arts channels in the Indian market for quite some time and he has gained a lot in understanding the structure thereof. He believes that changing the number game is possible only with reach. “The reach which is possible through indirect channels can’t be possible with recruitment of more people,” he declares, adding, “we aim to be at the top in coming two years. And for that Ricoh India is backed by Ricoh Asia. We have a large brand backing and the largest direct and indirect sales.”
Apart from the challenge of growing Ricoh’s share in the market, Sambit thinks he will also be working towards growing the overall Digital market. For this, he thinks every player will have to contribute in its own way. Ricoh, for the first time,has also brought multiple players on one platform in one such endeavour. It brought in providers of print equipments and finishing devices to promote the concept of ‘going digital and print digital’.
Further, Ricoh has also taken a production engine and put the Dicom software to work on this engine. The Dicom print could till now be printed on paper. Now the customer can decide whether he wants his prints on a film or a paper. This will not only reduce cost of print significantly but also help storage, manage, process and transfer of data through online networking including cloud. “It can bring down the cost of print substantially,” confirms Sambit.
“We are targeting the bigger buyer. In our case, the corporate is the biggest buyer. The task at hand is to educate the corporate about the possibilities of Digital printing and concepts of Production Printing. We have to take it to them that how Digital Production Printing can save costs for them and still be better. For this we have to even stretch to print vendors of the corporate,” foresees Sambit.
“We have to make it understand to the wider world that ‘you don’t need to print everything today and keep it for the future. Print when you need it’,” he continues.
“The amount of print wastage is enormous. It’s unbelievable that we can survive without printing for up to four years if we remove the print wastage we have today. This is where our key focus will be in coming times,” concludes Sambit.
