Brother plans to invest $ 3 million in India

Brother International, the Japanese vendor of MFDs, printers, fax machines
etc, has planned to invest $ 3 million within the next three years on
promotional activity amongst channels and end-users. These investment plans have
been right in time with its recent launch of MFDs in India. It has been present
in India since 1997 with its range of Ptouch label printers.

Though Brother is a late entrant in this arena with all the biggies present
in India, RS Anand Kumar, Country Manager, Brother International, claimed,
"In fact, we have launched at the right time and have ventured only after
conducting research and doing the required homework. On the channel front we
have Godrej as our nat-ional distributor which has approximately 150 dealers
under its array which will increase to 250 by the end of this year."

Brother has already started its promotional activity for the trade as it has
started channel meets in February and has planned to cover 10 cities by June
which mainly include Hyderabad, Pune, Ahme-dabad, Cochin, Chandigarh etc.

On the end-user front, Brother is in the process of concptualizing retail
initiatives where even channel partners may also be included. "The existing
partners having the required retail infra-structure will be included. But
nothing has been planned, there-fore it would be too early to comment,"
added Kumar.

On the service front, Brother had already trained Godrej engineers at its 14
locations while at the other locations there are other partners appointed.
Brother along with Godrej will soon launch a toll free number for the Indian
market, which will be accessible in the beginning from eight locations.

Brother presently offers four inkjet and four laser models in the MFD
segment. It also plans to launch its laser printers this year, which it supplies
to OEMs presently.

Nancy Sudheer

Mumbai