Exclusive | Go Remote' says Ricoh India's Rajan

Apart from the job profile one aspect that significantly influences an individual is the atmosphere that one works in. Encouraging ‘Office’ environment is what an employee yearns for. Ricoh India under its corporate tagline, imagine change, helps organizations transform the way they work and harness the collective imagination of their employees. With the changing dynamics in the Information Technology and Office Automation industry, Ricoh has transformed itself into providing unique service and solutions in Managed Document Services and Cloud Solutions. The solutions which simplify work life and improve productivity and efficiency. Further, Ricoh is also capable of providing holistic solutions for end –to –end need, IT services, Communication and Data management.

A T Rajan,is a dynamic professional under whose leadership Ricoh, India has seen its major high. He is the chief marketing officer at Ricoh, India has over 26 years of experience in various technical, commercial and managerial functions across industries. He is also the Head of the Corporate Strategy Office, responsible for Strategic Planning, Human Resources and CSR. He has been with Ricoh India Limited for over 19 years, where he has held various senior management positions in Marketing, Strategic Planning, Transition Management and Supply chain.

Adgully recently caught up with Mr. Rajan, to know more about Ricoh India plans and strategies in India.
The office imaging industry is quite unique and had biggest transformative developments over decades. More importantly, the industry has a curious mix of customers wanting high end integrated Office solutions at one end and is still opting to use Office Products as standalone devices at the other end.

In three years Ricoh has substantial a good amount of market share in Production printer, Laser printer, copier based multifunction printer and IT services. Ricoh is the market leader with 23.5% market share in copier based multifunction printer and 30% market share in Laser printer. Further, Ricoh has become one of the top IT service providers with national presence.

Rajan on being asked about customer preferences says, “With rapid technological advancements, the customers nowadays expect feature rich devices and solutions. He also added, “We also see tremendous business growth in Tier 2/3 cities where the work preferences of the customer are rapidly changing.”

Growth and Expansion Plans: 

Ricoh, a US$ 23 billion global giant in the field of Imaging Solutions, had posted net sales of Rs 633.12 crore, entered India a while back. Expressing his views on the growth of the company, Rajan said, “The past two years of Ricoh have been excellent. We have set our foot on this journey of rapid growth about three years back, towards the end of FY2010 Ricoh’s top line revenue was approximately 300 Crore. And by end of March 2014 we have achieved 1047 Crore. This is almost more than 50% growth year on year.”

Ricoh’s strategy revolves around understanding the need of the customer and then identifying key drivers of growth in existing business. “We have expanded from our core business to many new business verticals like IT services, laser printers, production printers,” Rajan added. 

Ricoh also focuses on certain key industry verticals that the company feels are propelling the growth of the Indian economy. Ricoh is also making its presence felt in the realm of education, manufacturing, healthcare, BFSI and besides these four, it is also focusing upon certain other niche emerging verticals. These industry verticals have a huge potential for growth and the customers in these verticals have unique requirements which cannot be generically fulfilled. Further, to fulfil the customers need, Ricoh has launched out with tailor-made solutions for each of these verticals.

Marketing Buzz:

In today’s scenario marketing plays a vital role. Speaking about what worked for Ricoh to make its mark in the industry, Rajan said, “Ricoh doesn’t take the traditional route of advertising or marketing. The company believes in product communication and connecting with end consumers and has two way communication. We also have major focus on consumer engagement opportunities. In the quest to have direct interface with customer, Ricoh has launched a new concept called Ricoh 360°. It’s a One Stop Shop offering to holistically meet every need of its customers by seamlessly integrating technology to boost office efficiencies.”

Ricoh that constantly works towards consumer engagement, at this point is focusing on their 360 degree event and multiple roads shows. Over a course of time social and digital media have become one of the powerful medium of marketing. Being primarily a B2B company, Ricoh India didn’t focus on Social media till now. Ricoh has recognized the same and looks forward using Social media to the best of its advantage.

Roadmap and major investments:

Rajan shares that there is a lot of action in places like Jamshedpur, Agartala, Trivandrum, Pune etc., so Ricoh is aiming at Tier – 2 and tier – 3 cities for the next couple of years. “We are planning to sponsor as well as participate in various events in the cities, as part of Ricoh’s ‘Go remote’ strategy,” he added.

Ricoh is also targeting the healthcare sector. Ricoh has already participated in various Government health projects like Rashtriya Swasthiya Bima Yojna. The company is constantly exploring other strategic growth verticals.  Ricoh India is expecting major investment in infrastructure and private partnership.

On parting note Rajan shares, technology is ever evolving and disruptive. Some of the future trends which he foresees are: Consumer will ask for increase in productivity and value addition in a product/ services, rather than a low cost purchase / offer. He also felt that customers nowadays are more aware and are interested in getting holistic solution rather than just a product purchase. Another good trend according to him is that these days Enterprise customers focus on less paper consumption and thus he added that he sees a huge requirement of document managed solutions.