Canon expects ‘good growth’ in 2021, confident to reach pre-pandemic level

Imaging products major Canon India expects “good growth” in 2021 compared to last year and to be on par with the level of the pre-pandemic year 2019, helped by an increase in sales and good performance, said a top company official on Tuesday.

Though some of its businesses got a short-term impact due to the second wave of the pandemic in the April-June quarter, the company is witnessing pent-up demand in its several domains, including cinema cameras and printing solutions. It has come out with several new products to meet the demand.

Canon has witnessed a “remarkable growth” in the home printer segment, in which it has introduced several new models, said Canon India President and CEO Manabu Yamazaki adding that the company is trying to “catch up with the demand”.

After the pandemic, the company has also registered growth into new domains for its camera business education and over-the-top (OTT) segments.

As virtual classrooms became new norms, Canon India has seen positive demand for its PRO DV camera models from online education institutes, schooling centres, system integrators and tutors.

A spike in the consumption of media and entertainment contents through OTT platforms, as cinema halls were closed during the pandemic, also helped Canon.

“The pandemic has led to a substantial growth of this segment, with OTT platforms becoming the new movie halls.

“We have received some good sales leads in the past few months for our range of cinema cameras, and we are looking at further strengthening our foothold in this segment,” said Canon India President and CEO Manabu Yamazaki.

Moreover, hybrid working culture after the pandemic is also aiding the growth of its office automation business.

“Document management and process automation solutions is at the core of digital strategies in a hybrid workplace. Enabling the same, we have seen increased demand for our cloud-based document management solutions such as Therefore Online,” he added.

According to reports, Canon India, which follows the January-December financial year, had reported a net sales revenue of Rs 2,579.6 crore in 2019.

The company expects decent growth in 2021 and to cross the level of the pre-pandemic 2019 numbers.

“At this point of time, we have already exceeded last year in terms of revenue performances and we are already growing from the first phase of COVID-19.

“Even the second phase was harder for all of us but we are expecting our level of growth to be on par with of level of 2019, the pre-COVID-19 timeline,” Canon India President and CEO Manabu Yamazaki told PTI.

The company is “quite confident” to deliver the market demand.

When asked as to whether Canon India would be able to attain a double-digit growth like in pre-pandemic years, Yamazaki said: “We do not know at this time as to how we are going to score in a couple of months, but so far we have been a pretty good range of growth at this moment.”

He added, “If you compare the pre-pandemic, probably we will be on par with that timeline. If you compare directly this year to the year before last, it would be on par; not a big growth but compare to 2020, when the first wave hit, we are expecting a pretty good growth.”

The company has had an impact on the purchase for time being in the April-June quarter, when the second wave hit, but is “confident with the current speed” which it is picking up at this moment in sales.

Canon would continue to focus on its retailing format Canon Image Square and is introducing CIS 4.0 ‘photography stores’.

“Marking a new milestone in our retail strategy, we are introducing CIS 4.0 ‘photography stores’, an all-new format which will focus on imaging solutions for various customer segments from the wedding, wildlife, cinematography, vloggers, fashion, and home customers,” it said.

Its objective is to create an immersive consumer experience with technical support tailor-made to different genres of photography.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)