Balancing Business between Compatibles and OEM Products Helped Delco Copier Sail Safely thru Pandemic

Founded in 2010, Delco Copier is a New Delhi-based provider of a wide range of office consumables. In 2020, the company celebrated 10 years of existence in the Indian imaging industry with success, growth and increased presence. The range of products of Delco consumables includes toners, toner cartridges, drums, lamination machines, black & color desktop printer inks, etc, under their brand name Delco.

Sanjeev Chaudhary, Proprietor, Delco Copier, clarifies, “Our USPs are we offer uncompromising quality, good service, timely deliveries and maintain strong and long-term relationships with our partners based on trust and credibility. Our partnerships with HP, Brother and Canon are doing well. We constantly evolve to meet the latest needs of the market and in the past decade crossed many milestones in the field of providing imaging &office automation products.We see opportunity in every challenge.”

The company also provides OEM cartridges& toner powders and desktop inks for the leading brands of printers and copiers. Delco Copier is also an authorized partner of HP, Brother, Canon and Epson.

Talking about the market trends and challenges, Sanjeev Chaudhary comments, “Now users, including government offices, are moving from A3 copiers to A4 printers when their loads are from low to medium, so we are witnessing good demand for our HP A4 MFPs. Inkjet printers today cost almost 50% the price of laserjet printers and cost per copy is also very low, so inkjet printers are selling more. The demand for color consumables is increasing which form today 25% of our business compared to 5%, 5 years back. On the color side too, inkjet is faring far better than laser.”

Today, Delco has over 1600 different compatible consumable items in their portfolio. Delco Copier possesses an excellent warehouse equipped to maintain the right temperature, humidity and safety of the goods. The company has been constantly endeavoring to achieve total-customer-satisfaction through impeccable quality and user-friendly designs.

Briefing about the impact of COVID-19 and the anti-dumping duty, Sanjeev Chaudhury states, “The year 2020 was bad of course from business point of view due to COVID-19, but by Jan 2021 we reached our normal business levels. Copier business is low because educational and govt. sectors are still not working at normal levels, but the demand for printers, particularly the inkjet category, has increased several-fold. Since there has been a downward trend in the sales of copiers, most of the partners who were selling only copiers have now added A4 printers to their portfolio and as a result the number of partners selling our A4 printers has increased. Anti-dumping duty on black toners has pushed up the prices by 10% and unfortunately the variety of the toners available with local toner manufacturers for different models and brands is limited, so this has really created a challenge. We follow the strategy of balancing between the sales of compatible consumables and the OEM printer and consumables, so we are able sustain our business well.”

Delco Copier uses the most modern packaging methods and takes right care to see that goods do not suffer wear and tear in transit. The company pays special attention to product design and packaging, finish, automation levels, effective utility, technological compatibility, printing quality, shapes, sizes, etc.

Talking about their future plans, Sanjeev Chaudhury quotes, “We operate pan-India though most of our customers come from North, North-East and Central India regions. We also export our products to Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh and our exports to these countries are growing at an annual rate of 20-25%. In the coming years, we want to maintain our annual growth rate of 25%. We are currently present in 19 states, including the eastern & north-eastern India, reaching through a network of 750 partners. Overall, we are happy with our growth and performance. In future, we want to try adding IT peripherals to our portfolio to a limited extent. We want to focus more on A4 printers and the OEM consumables, since the consumption of compatible consumables has come down further as most home and SOHO users prefer to use OEM toners, cartridges and inks.”