Sharp enters printing solution business space

Company plans to appoint 10 major distributors to register 20 percent growth
during 2004-05

Sharp Business Systems India Ltd has revved up the much-hyped 'color in
office' mantra by launching its full color multifunction digital system
AR-C170M. The launch also marks the com-pany's entry into the already
cluttered MFD and printing solution business space.

While accepting the fact that the product would compete directly with similar
solutions from rival Canon, Xerox and HP, Sunil K Sinha, Chief Executive, Sharp
India said that he is assured of wooing the corpo-rate to switchover to the new
product because of its lower TCO and speed. In fact, the company is harping upon
on the lower TCO factor and has chalked out its market commu-nication strategy
based on it.

The company claims its new product delivers 17 color prints at Rs 4.49 per
page and 26 black and White prints at 49 paise per page, thereby crashing the
color printing cost in the market. According to the Atul K Gupta, National Marke-ting
and Business Develop-ment Manager, Sharp India "Our new solution helps save
up to 54 percent in terms of TCO as compared to color inkjet environment, and
around 53 percent vis-à-vis color copier environment acr-oss any existing brand
in India."

Giving details of the pro-duct, Sinha said, "The AR-C170M makes color
communi-cation affordable and enables the management of entire document needs of
a com-pany-copy, scan and print-from a single nodal point. This combined
with efficient net-work printing solution, inbuilt password-enabled security to
ensure confidentiality of a document and the unique price point makes it an
ideal busi-ness solution."

The company has aggre-ssively priced the product at Rs seven lakh and is
targeting to sell over 100 units in the next six months. Sharp has also chalked
out its plans for a nationwide road show-tar-geted primarily at the cor-porate
users as well as the IT reseller community.

Plans for point of sale (POS) road shows are also on the cards. According to
Sinha, while Sharp does not have a very strong IT channel base, the company is
looking at appointing 10 major distri-butors to help it achieve a 20 percent
growth in the segment during the fiscal 2004-05.

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