HP sees 35-40% growth in smaller cities

Hewlett-Packard (HP) will pay extra attention to tier II and III cities in India as it sees a 50 per cent growth in the digital printing market and as a company it sees 35 to 40 per cent growth in the industrial digital printing solutions.

Talking to Business Standard, Pankaj Goswami, the country category manager-Large Format Industrial Printing Imaging and Printing Group, HP, said, "The company is getting 40 per cent of its business in Scitex from B and C category cities in India. We see a 50 per cent growth in the digital printing market in India. We will pay extra focus on cities falling under tier two and three cities in the forthcoming years as the retail industry is going to grow fast in these cities. Large format digital printing market has a direct relation with retail business as most of the malls, mega malls and hyper markets use signs boards and banners. The advertising media is growing and city civic authorities are also growing their business in advertising. This will result in the demand of such large format digital machines which can print banners, small magazines, wrappers, signboards etc."

The company sees a 35-40 per cent growth in business from B and C category cities in India and want to cover more cities in the future. The firm has 100 Scitex XL1500 machines installed across India and 20 of them have been installed in B and C category cities.

These cities include Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Pune, Bengalore and Vijaynagar. As the retail markets will grow in tier two and three cities the demand will also grow for such large format digital machines. Our growth is subjective to the demand situation in these cities.

On a HP survey he said that the country has only 3 per cent organised market in retail. However, it's bound to grow upto 15 per cent by 2010. There is 25 million square feet space being prepared for the retail business and all those malls and super malls will require signboards. This growth in retail will boost the demand for our HP Scitex machines."

On his plans to develop these markets, Goswami said, "We will create awareness in the clients who are in advertising and graphic business. This will result in increase in the demand and best utilisation of the machines. Growing awareness will open up more markets for us as the machines are more cost effective as compared with traditionally used Analogue printing machines."

The company announced the 100th installation of its HP Scitex XL1500 in India at Kolkata. With this India has become the third country to have 100 such machines after China and Mexico.

The 100th machine was installed by an Ahmedabad based company Positive Point Graphic Process Ltd. for its Kolkata location. Scitex was acquired by HP 18 months ago.

The HP Scitex XL1500 can print 30,000 sq. ft. in just 24 hours. It is a 8 colour solvent wide format printing system for creating outdoor publicity material.