We can grow three times in India in five years

How has been your financial performance been in the

last fiscal?



The fiscal year just ended in March, so I cant share any specific numbers

at this point of time. However, I can say that with regard to last year, our

sales figures have come down but our profitability has gone up. This has largely

been due to the structural reforms over the last year.

What are some of the structural reforms?



Our primary businesses are printer and projector as well as our Quartz

division under Seiko. The LCD business is something we are coming out of. Also,

we have shrunk our semiconductor business to a great extent. The major reason

for this is that we do not own the key final applications in those product

segments as compared to some of our Taiwanese and Chinese competitors. In the

semiconductor space however, we are still bullish about certain niche product

lines including OLED (Organic LED) and e-paper, which we believe are unique

business models for us. We have also gone in for a leaner structure by

downsizing the number of employees.

What will be your key focus areas this year?



We will continue to focus on the inkjet printer segment, concentrating on

both the consumers as well as the enterprise space. We want to expand into newer

markets where products like large format printers (LFPs) are more in demand. We

are also bullish about dot matrix printers (DMP), especially for verticals like

retail in the BRIC countries. In the projector line of products, we are

launching new interactive low priced devices with high brightness quotient. We

will focus on price competitive products for the developing economies while for

the developed economies, we will be offering feature intensive devices.

Finally, what are your India specific plans?



As a company, we will continue making India specific products in terms of

design and pricing. We see increasing potential in enterprise, home and the

industrial segments. Also, our DMP play in the retail segment has been very

good. With an annual growth of 28% overall in India over the last year, I would

expect us to grow our revenue by three times in a span of five years. Coming to

manufacturing, we are not looking at beginning anything from India at the moment

but for the future, manufacturing locally is a possibility given the amount of

intellectual capital available here.

John Jacob/DQ Channels



maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in