“Our Remanufactured Cartridges are High Quality Compared to Compatibles”

Tonerline, headquartered in New Delhi, founded in 1989, is a distributor of laser cartridges, inkjet cartridges, inks, toner powder, imaging drums, imaging supplies, CISS, MICR toner, printer spares, media, fax rolls, inkjet machines, chips, laser machines, copier drums, copier toners, etc.

Rachna Aggarwal, Director, Tonerline shares, “We provide printer spares and consumables for various different brands. We are Tier 1 distributor for Brother printers and Tier 2 distributor for HP, Samsung, Canon and others. Nearly 50% of our revenues come from distributing Brother printers and spares, 40% from HP’s and the rest 10% from others.”
The brands they distribute belong to several top notch companies including Brother, HP, Samsung and Canon, among others. They also distribute lifestyle products for Apple which includes iPads, laptops, MacBooks, etc.

They have their own brand for laser cartridges namely Tonerline. In this regard, Rachna shares, “We import compatible laser cartridges from China and Taiwan for our Tonerline. We aim to provide the best quality compatible cartridges, but most of the present Indian consumers are price-sensitive and they want cheaper cartridges so we have no other go than providing them compatibles of such quality that matches the price they are willing to pay. We tell them this frankly.

We also remanufacture, besides selling compatibles. Our remanufactured cartridges are of high quality and they give better output because we assemble them with the best quality components. So naturally, they cost more than compatibles. We give warranty on our remanufatured cartridges, but we do not give any warranty on compatibles. Nearly 70% of our revenues for cartridges come from remanufactured ones and 30% from compatibles. Corportates do understand how remanufactured ones are better than cheap compatibles. Nearly 10% of our remanufactured cartridge revenues come from corporate, 75% from retail selling and 15% from distribution.”

Regarding the challenges they are facing, Rachna says, “One main challenge is the ongoing economic downturn which held the IT markets stagnant, and the second challenge is depreciation in the value of rupee against dollar. This has made our revenues stagnant even though the volume sales have gone up. The third challenge we are facing is unhealthy competition from online portals. If something is selling at Rs 45,000 in the traditional market, the online portals are selling the same thing at Rs 35,000. We cannot sell at such low prices. So something has to be done by the market leaders to check this trend. Time alone can tell how to deal with this unhealthy tendency.”

Regarding future goals, Rachna confides, “We want to grow in terms of revenues and profitability. We also want to diversify by adding more products to our portfolio, but at present we cannot give any clearly defined objectives, because at present our plans are tentative.”