We are increasing our services footprint

— Manoj Kumar
CEO, Ricoh India

Ricoh India is trying to establish itself as a strong services player with the help of strong product portfolio it can boast of. The company is increasing its footprint in different categories and different verticals through a growing network of partners pan India. On these issues and much more, Dataquest quizzed Manoj Kumar, CEO & Executive Vice President, Ricoh India and tried to know how Ricoh’s business is shaping up in India. Excerpts

Where does Ricoh stand in the Indian market today?

Ricoh has been present in India for about three decades as it began India operations in early 80s with a tie-up between RPG Group of Industries and Ricoh, Japan. In those days the company was printer-centric. The first milestone in our journey was in 2004 when Ricoh acquired an office automation company Gasteiner. At that time our growth rate was about 10% to 15% on an annualized basis.

Later we acquired companies such as Info Print to strengthen our production printing capability whereas second acquisition was of Momentum Infocare in the year 2011. Since we had a good range of products, it was time to grow our services. In the last three years we have actually grown this business significantly. So our new business lines which complimented our core business enabled us to actually became a one-stop solution provider to meet every need of our customers and internally that’s what we called 360 degrees approach. We now have the products, solutions, a range of services, which we can offer to our customers.

For IT services, do you have specific set of expertise?

We have specific expertise in-house with us and there is a complete set of services which we offer to our customers under IT services. Using these IT services, we are also able to create customized solutions to fulfill specific needs of the customers. What enables us as a service provider is our range of products. It is a perfect harmony of products with customized solutions through which we can fulfill every specific need of each customer across multiple verticals in India.

Is Ricoh India looking at customers in India only for services? Are you also handling any international customers?

Ricoh India is purely focused on the Indian market Now on one head you have large players, very-very large players which are focused more on the offshore business. They hardly pay any attention to the domestic market. Now, as a result if there is a customer in India who wants to avail of certain IT services, he will not get that kind of quality services and personalized attention from these large players, because their focus is their offshore business.

Plus IT services companies which are focused on the domestic market do not have quality services. They don’t have the bandwidth to do offshore business, but they are so small that they don’t have the requisite bandwidth to cater to your needs and Ricoh actually steps in over there to fill this void. We are big but because we are focused more on the domestic market, we are able to provide the same quality of services that the large players provide with the same kind of personal attention. So it’s an ideal mix which is helping us to grow IT services business manifolds in India.

How is your business distributed between your products and IT services?

Even within IT services we have products. We actually follow a matrix structure. We have four product lines—Core business, IT services, production printers, and laser printers. Each of these business lines have products as well as services.
We have around 900 people who work with us in Ricoh India. Out of those 900 about 250 to 300 are employed in IT services.

Do you offer cloud and datacenter hosting services?

On IT services, to add a few more points, we have our own cloud, we have our own datacenters. The primary datacenter is in Kolkatta. We have the secondary datacenter over in Delhi. We are ISO 27001 and CMMI Level 4 certified company and in Kolkatta we also have an incubation center. We have a software development center. It’s a huge facility which is owned by us in Kolkatta from where we render IT services. We also have a call center there.

What is your turnover annually in India and what kind of growth are you looking at?

Our turnover for the year ended 31 March, 2014 was `647 crore. And in the last three years we have grown from `300 crore to this figure. We have grown three times so our compounded annualized growth rate has been 15% YoY.

Was it organic or inorganic?

Mix of both organic as well as inorganic. And there is no reason why we should not be able to maintain this growth rate even going forward. Where is this growing going to come from? I already explained you. We complimented our core business with the new business lines which perfectly complimented the core business and enabled us to emerge as a holistic solution provider to our customers. Going forward our strategies will be to focus on tier-2, -3 towns because we feel there is a lot of business opportunity which exists over there.

How many channel partners?

We have 3,000 channel partners. Besides, we are able to reach out to every corner of the country and cater to customer needs. On the other hand, is our effort to go and find out what the customers want. Looking at their requirements we try to fulfill their needs through our own offerings and through our partners. We have a strong network of alliance partners at the back end.

What kind of challenges are you facing in the market?

Change in the market dynamics is a very big challenge. Because of the changes which are taking place in technology the customers’ needs are changing very fast. One product or solution which is relevant today becomes outdated very soon. You have to constantly keep reinventing. You have to basically keep pace within changing times and be very quick in terms of adapting yourself to the changing needs of the customers. The other challenge I would speak of is the range of customers and their divergent needs.

How do you see this printing business? Is it dying?

Printing is a business which is here to stay and the printing market is growing. Yes, the customer needs are changing. Offset is giving way to digital. Digital is growing at a much higher pace and requirements of the customers are such that printing will also stay.