Nikon India - Focusing for leadership

Three years after its entry into India, Nikon India crafted its own success story. Its biggest achievement lies addressing the need of the consumers through innovative products and by opening up more service centres.

With a brand value, which says, 'trustworthiness and creativity', Nikon celebrated it's 90th anniversary in July 2007, the same year it made its debut in India. Founded in 1917 as Nippon Kōgaku, the company was renamed as Nikon Corporation in 1988. Starting with the F-mount cameras in 1959 and moving on to the Titanium cameras and then to cameras, the likes of which were used by NASA and further to the first underwater Nikonos Camera, the brand has truly evolved with time. Nikon's technology and innovation remains unquestionable till date.

Nikon's motto is, 'Our Aspirations - Meeting needs. Exceeding expectations' set by its president, Michio Kariya. Interestingly in India, the company worked with a different strategy since its products have been very popular, especially in the category of professional range of cameras. The only problem was that a consumer often encountered problems in terms of after-sales service. Therefore, in India, the company shifted focused to setting up collection and service centres. Nikon India will be setting up over 21 Nikon authorized collection centres across 14 states as part of its expansion plans in the country. Additionally, the company has added a distributor in Jammu and Kashmir.

In an official communique, Hiroshi Takashina, MD, Nikon India, had this to say: "We wanted to negate the problems that Nikon customers in such non-metro areas are currently facing with regard to repairing their products. The new collection centres will provide users with a service or facility through which they can get their products repaired without facing any problem. This is a step towards bringing our customers closer to the brand Nikon." The company already has 18 well-established, authorised Nikon service centres.

On the retail front, Nikon has expanded its footprint with over 50 D-SLR and Coolpix zones and aims to take this up to 80 by March 2011. Early, this year the company expanded its reach by opening a branch office in Bengaluru. With this, Nikon is present in all four regions of the country - North (Gurgaon), East (Kolkata), West (Mumbai) and South (Bangalore).

The company also revamped its communication and advertising strategy by allocating a budget of Rs 62 crore. This year saw Nikon's first TV commercial, which launched the Coolpix spring collection. Additionally, Nikon India went aggressive on outdoor with neon signage in Mumbai and Bangaluru as well as POS branding. Nikon India aims to increase its market share from 45 per cent to 50 per cent in the D-SLR segment and from 13 per cent to 15 per cent in the Coolpix compact camera segment, by 2010-2011.

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