Lexmark launches 67 products in India

MUMBAI, INDIA: Having restarted its operations in India, US-based Lexmark international has launched a host of color laser printers, ink-jet and multi function devices in India. Announcing its plans further, the vendor stated that while its enterprise products will be handled by its Mumbai-based national distributor CMS, the ink-jet and SOHO products will be the responsibility of the Bengaluru-based national distributor, Cyberstar Infocom.

Laser printers and MFPs will be the focus area for Lexmark that has launched a total of 67 products for the India market.

These products have already made their debut in US and Europe markets. Sharing details around its go-to-market strategy, Kumar Priya Ranjan, Country Manager, Lexmark International stated, “Lexmark will adopt the indirect model for expanding its presence further. We announced the Lexmark value partner program in the month of May 2009 and have so far appointed seven to eight partners to resell our products in India. We will now look at increasing our partner base and take the Value partner count to around 100 partners by the end of 2009.”

When asked why the company had decided to re-enter India market, Ranjan reiterated, “We had never exited the India market but had slowed down our operations. We had changed our business strategy and had adopted the offshore model whereby we had directed our distributors to import Lexmark products from Hong Kong and resell in India.”

Lexmark is now building up a team and will gradually make inroads into the Indian market. Until recently Lexmark’s efforts were directed towards Britain and China but the vendor is now looking at strengthening its presence in Russia and India as well. With this launch the company has resurfaced in India.

Lexmark had earlier closed down its operation in early 2007. The reasons for closing its operations in India were said to be the company's reliability on only word of mouth publicity. While the above strategy did help the vendor to a certain extent but the company was unable to enhance brand awareness among the end-customers.

Lexmark will now differentiate itself by offering printing solution in addition to offering a gamut of printer products. “We are offering solutions such as discovery analysis that helps eliminate waste. In addition fleet optimization and managing documents within a given work environment are other services that we will encourage our customers to look at,” added Ranjan.

Lexmark will also look at ways to help its partners to graduate to a level wherein they can transform themselves from being a mere box pusher to take up a solution centric approach as part of boosting their businesses.