NEC India to increase focus on the retail market

NEC India announced its renewed focus on the retail market in India. NEC showcased its various solutions at the Retail Technology Conclave (ReTechCon) held in Mumbai recently at Hotel Renaissance.

With a vision to make deeper inroads in the retail sector, NEC India showcased technology solutions in areas like Near Field Communication (NFC), FRS (Face Recognition solution) at the event. These solutions will further help in building a complete social infrastructure for retailers to offer better customer experience.

Amit Bhatia, Head Retail Solutions, NEC India said, "The retailers in the country are working out strategies to balance growth and prosperity. Mobile payment is going to increase significantly." He further added, "Technology is redefining the entire customer experience in retail, right from the point where the customer enters the store to the point of exit, and even beyond. IT solutions in retail therefore have a more strategic role to play today than ever before."

The company has been making slow and steady growth of 2-3% in terms of marketshare annually in India. The company recently had changed the entire model and structure. Bhatia said, "We are now moving towards a solution business model and efforts and focus is towards enabling our solutions business. However, we will continue with our products business. 70-80% business still comes from products business and it will remain an important line of business for us." He further added, "NEC India will now strengthen its solutions offering in the country across verticals."

Now the company in India aims to strengthen its focus on the retail as well as the entertainment industry and assist its customers with end-to-end solutions right from the point of sale to payments. NEC's NFC complemented with security solutions like NEC's Face Recognition will empower retailers to acquire customer loyalty and enhance customer experience through its ease of use.

For NEC India, telecom is the largest contributor followed by Public safety, retail and enterprise segments. Going ahead, the company believes Public safety and Retail are going to be opening up tremendous opportunities for the company and its channel partners. As of today, the company go-to-market includes both direct as well as through partner ecosystem.

NEC's NFC technology enables users to conduct secure, contactless payments and transactions with their NFC-enabled mobile phones instead of using cash or credit cards. NEC has provided an end-to-end cloud-based e-payment system called NFC e-Money server that integrates itself facilitating interactivity between devices (the NFC enabled phone and PVR wallet access), for any monetary transactions. Last year NEC announced its first breakthrough outside Japan in NFC with the commercial deployment of its mobile NFC payment ecosystem at PVR cinemas across 10 locations.