FOCAL POINT

Calcutta, July 23: Canon India has set a target to become a Rs 1,500-crore company by 2010.

This will make India the second-highest growth region for Canon in Asia-Pacific after China within three years. In the process, the growth from Indian operations is also expected to be higher than Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Last calendar year, the global major in imaging technologies posted revenues of Rs 400 crore. This is set to double by 2008. Canon will invest Rs 50 crore this year in its various operations.

It expects investments to go up to Rs 150 crore by 2010.

Canon employs about 440 people, which is likely to cross 1,000 by 2010. Digital cameras and the document solutions business will spearhead this growth in turnover.

“Out of our revenue of Rs 400 crore, 45 per cent comes from document solutions and 25 per cent each from cameras and printers. We plan to take the contribution by cameras up to 33 per cent by next year,” Bharadwaj added.

The multi-function document solutions business, which has become a Rs 1,000-crore market, is growing at 25 per cent while Canon has recorded a 33 per cent growth in the segment.

These machines, with printing, scanning, copying and other such multi-functional utilities, comprise about 80,000 units per year with a nascent market in India.

Around 10 lakh digital cameras are sold in India annually, of which 3 lakh are from the grey market.

The digital camera industry is also exploding with 50 per cent growth and Canon is growing ahead of the market at 70 per cent. “The eastern region has contributed 20 per cent to our turnover,” Bharadwaj said.

“Our market shares in the region are higher than the national average in most of our product categories,” he added.