“Copian compatibles compete with OEM consumables”

At present, Copian International’s broad product line includes toner powders, compatible cartridges, OPC drums, PCRs, mag rollers, chips, printer parts, blades, rubber bushings, chips, rubber brushes, Teflon grease, pickup rubber, pickup paper roller rubber, tension springs, color toner powders for all models. In an interaction with Imaging Solution, Naveen Thirani, CEO, Copian International, shares their company’s policy and business strategy.

Copian International, established in 1996, is a Thane-based (Maharashtra) company initially started with manufacturing of dot-matrix printer ribbons. Today, Copian has its supply network throughout India and is a popular brand known for quality products and quick services. The company imports and distributes only from reputed ODMs from China. Copian strives hard to get new and quality products through which their dealers and end customers can reap the benefits. Today, the company has compatible cartridges and toner powders for all the reputed brands like HP, Xerox, Samsung, Ricoh, Brother, etc.

Naveen clarifies, “We operate throughtout India through a trusted and efficient dealer network. We have loyal customers in every city in India. We import many tailor-made products according to our specifications, mainly from different and proven Chinese ODMs. Then we provide all these products under-one-roof under our Copian brand name. Offering good quality products that give quality print and high page yield are hallmarks of our brand. We compete with OEMs for quality, reliability, consistency and yield; we do not compete with local distributors, while at the same time our compatible cartridges cost just about 15-20% of the OEM cartridges thus giving a great price advantage to the consumers as well as to the dealers.”

Regarding the latest trends, Naveen asserts, “The latest trend is high quality compatibles are slowly taking over a part of the refilling business. In other words, a part of the refilling segment will be eventually replaced by quality compatible cartridges. Our compatible cartridges, laser toners and inks, etc give the best quality and high page yield. Next, our compatible cartridges and others have less than 0.1% rejection rate. In most cases, we offer replacement guarantee and our after-sales-service is among the best in the industry. Color usage, both on inkjet side as well as on laser side, is growing fast, though at present the color segment forms only 10% to 15% of our sales. This segment has a great future. We are going to leverage on this aspect in the coming years.”

The new Indian government at the centre has come up with many new initiatives with an intention to improve quality, level off taxation methods and to boost the industrial and economic growth. In this regard, Naveen opines, “We are very positive about the new government’s initiatives. GST will be very helpful to us and to the industry in general, because it will help to avoid multiple taxation and speed up business transactions and product movement, and we can transfer this saving to the end customers. Next, BIS is also very good because at present there are a lot of low-quality products and fakes in the market which can easily mislead the gullible customers. With BIS in force, all these low quality products and fakes will be out. Only quality players will remain in the market. That will be a good development for both, to the customers and to us.”

With respect to their channel strategy and future plans, Naveen clarifies, “We have a trusted network of dealers with whom we work as a family. We maintain very good relationship and communication with our dealer community and work with them hand-in-hand. We regularly update them about our products and the new technical aspects. When it comes to our future plans, we want to expand and strengthen our dealer network further. Also recently we ventured into providing copier powder in a big way and want to expand it further. We want to expand more into corporate customer-base. Over all we want increase our reach, scope and revenues.”