Earlier this year, the sales and service part of Ricoh India was transformed into a new company called Minosha India. We had an opportunity to speak with digital print industry veteran, Balaji Rajagopalan, the recently appointed CEO core business of Minosha India. Edited excerpts from our interview follow.
Naresh Khanna – What is the situation at Minosha India? Are you back up and running in the market as far as looking after the Ricoh print production engines?
Balaji Rajagopalan – Our organization continues — only under different management and name. We have more than 250 channel partners for our office products such as multifunction printers, and some of them also partner with us on the print production side. On the print production side of entry-level, mid, and high production engines, including a few partners we have more than a hundred engineers for both the MFP and PP engines.
We never stopped servicing and supporting our customers even though we may have gone through a challenging period over the last four years. We may have been silent, but our customers have continued to be supported by our engineers and our team with servicing, spares, and consumables. We have sufficient consumables in stock to cope with the ongoing constraints of the pandemic situation.
NK – How do you see the economic recovery and Minosha’s market share going forward?
Balaji Rajagopalan – You know me, and my idea is always to bring positivity into the system! Minosha is fully committed to the print market, and financially we are in a good position. How do we grow the business and get back our market share in the production space? Daily I get inputs from the customers, partners, and employees, and I can only say that we should or will grow at the same pace as the market grows.
I firmly believe that we should not be living in fear and should, with the right precautions, be engaging in productive activity. Challenges such as the trend toward virtual offices and remote working will put some pressure on the commercial sector. However, the businesses that will survive and grow will be those who take up the technology to the core. Those who innovate using technology and can use it to conduct their business will do well.
It’s a bit difficult to say how the Covid-19 pandemic will play out, but I believe that unless there is a dramatic setback, we will have to take the proper precautions and co-exist with the situation. By January 2021, there should be an economic recovery of 80 to 90%.
We have been doing our ground planning and working with technology for the past three months. We are getting ready by using webinars and virtual technical sessions for training in technology and networking for our customers, partners and employees.
NK – Are you planning any new Ricoh print production engine launches?
Balaji Rajagopalan – Again, it’s a bit early to say because of the circumstances, but roughly the answer is yes. In the September-October timeframe, we should show new entry, mid and high production engines.
NK – Like with many of the new offset presses, do you have a way to get networked remote feedback from your digital presses in the market to know if the economic and print activity is actually picking up?
Balaji Rajagopalan – Yes. All our print engines installed in the market in the past two years have this technology called @remote already installed. With @remote, we can monitor everything remotely from a networked engine. It enables automatic toner ordering and in the event of a breakdown examining the situation and even notifying the service partner. It can improve efficiencies for the customer’s day-to-day operations. We are keen to use technology to the core, but based on our team feedback, the Ricoh engines are extremely robust – they have proven that in the Indian market.
