The lockdowns imposed in the country due to Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in employees working from home and children attending classes online. This has resulted in a rise in home usage of inkjet inktank printers. However, because the workplaces are shut, the office segment has seen a dip, said Siva Kumar, senior general manager, inkjet printers at Epson India.
“The situation created by Covid-19 has created an opportunity in the home segment as office segment was impacted due to prolonged shutdown of workplaces,” Siva Kumar said. “Information technology companies incentivized their workers to set up work infrastructure at their homes. This gave a big boost to home printing segment.”
The decline in office segment was offset to a large extent by growth in home segment; where overall impact on the inkjet inktank printers was not very severe, he said.
Epson India operations remain resilient
Although the impact on Epson India’s inkjet inktank printers was visible due to Covid-19, that impact was not very severe. For the year that ended in March 2020, Epson sold little over 810,000 units while for the year that ended in March 2021, that figure was slightly over 760,000 units.
“So, the impact has not been very big,” Siva Kumar said. The company expects that in the year that will end in March 2022, its performance will be much better. “Whatever losses we saw in April, May, and June this year are expected to be made up during the rest of the year if there are no more disruptions,” he added.
Adoption of digital communications methods
Like a lot of other companies across industries, Epson India too has successfully adopted digital communication means. The company has been interacting with its partners and customers online using digital platforms.
“We were able to connect with a lot of people and organize training programs online. Earlier we used to do face-to-face interactions but now we have aggressively adopted digital methods. This has also resulted in an increase in the number of engagements. I believe this trend will continue even if things go back to normal,” Siva Kumar said.
Focus on environment
Siva Kumar said that Epson India is working on creating greater awareness about its heat-free technology among its customers. Epson’s heat-free technology does not require heat in the ink ejection process. Instead, pressure is applied to the piezo element, which flexes backwards and forwards firing the ink from the printhead.
Heat-free technology uses less power because it does not use heat to warm up. As inkjets have no fuser unit to heat, this results in significantly less energy consumption. Thanks to heat-free technology, Epson inkjet printers use fewer parts that need replacing.
“As a responsible corporate entity, we are doing our part to care for the environment. We are trying to educate our customers about heat-free technology so that we can help them minimize impact on the environment,” he said.
