A power-packed press conference during the day; followed by a factory visit to G K Vale and a customer meet in the evening made it clear that Canon India is very serious about digitising India’s Rs 3000-cr photo print market; of which only “10% is digital as of now”.

[Canon's DreamLabo 5000 at GK Vale: First in South Asia]

The highlight of the press conference was the official announcement of G K Vale, a 100 year old photo lab in Bengaluru as the first partner for the DreamLabo 5000. The G K Vale which has been running the device since the past two months has been positioning the premium print version from the DreamLabo as “HD prints”.
This launch makes India the first country in South Asia where the Dreamlabo 5000 machine is being installed.

A top-level Canon team announced its entry into the commercial photo printing business in India. The press announcement event was attended by Kensaku Konishi, the president and CEO, Canon Singapore.

Kazutada Kobayashi, the president and CEO, Canon India, said, “Canon has always been at the forefront of bringing innovative products to customers. With this latest business entry, we are hoping to strengthen our ability to meet the printing needs of professional and wedding photographers. With the DreamLabo 5000, we clearly want to establish innovation leadership in India. For us at Canon India, this is not just a new machine, but the technology that can revitalise the entire industry and open up substantial new business opportunities. Canon is setting a new benchmark for the production printing of high quality photos with this launch.”

Delivering a new standard of combined photo and text quality together with high productivity, the DreamLabo offers the production photo printing market a viable alternative to silver halide technology. In addition, through opportunities possible from premium quality, it offers both the production photo and the small batch premium print-on-demand (POD) markets substantial new revenue opportunities.
 

Alok Bharadwaj, executive vice president, Canon India, said, “India is a Rs 3,000 crore photo printing industry with lion share coming from wedding albums and travel vacation photos. While there is tremendous change in photo capturing, the printing art is still dominated with conventional technology. Conventional silver halide technology is just too old and digital alternative is not matching customer expectations. There was enormous scope of value creation in this space. Our partners call the new Dreamlabo 5000 prints as HD (high definition) prints.”

He further added “This launch has put India on a global map of Hi quality digital photo printing.”

To promote this business and to impact a larger ecosystem, Canon organised a meet in the evening which comprised more than 100 photo labs, wedding photographers, wedding planners and event agencies from South India.

Canon India is expected to achieve revenue of Rs. 1908 crore in 2013 which is 3% growth over last year. Canon is aggressively promoting the print production devices in 2014, the DreamLab is an integral part of this strategy.

Bharadwaj said, “We plan to start with Rs 15 crore coming out of this domain in 2014. It has a potential to create Rs 100 crore business stream in five years.”