Olivetti re-enters, with Inkjet printers and fax

Nisha Kurian

After a gap of six years Olivetti is again back in India through Spice Net Limited with a range of Inkjet printers and Inkjet fax to revive their brand name. 

Olivetti was a familiar name in India a decade ago when BK Modi, Chairman of Spice Net Ltd (formerly Modi Olivetti), set a joint venture with the Italian company Olivetti for PCs in 1989 even before IBM, Compaq and other major players could make forays into India with their PCs. But in 1995, Olivetti stopped manufacturing PCs worldwide.

But now they are back. Through the Industrial Joint Venture with Olivetti, Spice Net Limited will be launching Artjet 10 and Artjet 20 printers which is targeted at the home, SOHO and the corporate user.

Artjet 10 (1200x600 dpi) is a lower end product whereas the higher end Artjet 20 is powered with 1200x1200 dpi. OFX 540 and OFX 580 are plain paper Inkjet Fax with computer connectivity. The OFX 120 is a thermal paper facsimile, which uses the same line as your telephone to send or receive documents. Moreover, it won't need your help to recognize incoming calls, since it distinguishes automatically between fax messages and phone calls. Furthermore, they have launched JP90, a mobile inkjet printer to complement notebook computers. The Olivetti StudioJet 300 is a multifunctional color system, which combines scanner-cum-printer-cum-color copies. It caters to the corporate and the
SMEs.

"Olivetti is an old brand and it is synonymous with quality. We will use this good will to sell this product," said Krishna Kumar Menon, Branch Manager, Spice Net, Chennai. In Chennai, Spice Net Limited has appointed Elite Peripherals Limited and Innovative Electronics as their distributors. Added Krishna Kumar, "Elite has got a lot of assemblers catering to them from various parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Innovative Electronics sells a lot of printers and they target the SOHO, SME and corporate segment. In Pondicherry, we have appointed Leonet Systems & Solutions as the distributor. There are two distributors in Coimbatore, three in Kerala and one in Trichy." It is upto the distributors to decide on the number of resellers.

"We are not employing any strategies to attract the resellers. Olivetti is a fast selling, highly competitive product with a good margin. Thus the dealers would be interested in our product. We believe in giving a good margin to our resellers than good schemes," said MH Shaik Dawood, Business Manager-Channels. "Our Inkjet printers come with Inkjet cartridges called Jumbo with which the per copy cost is very less when compared with other competitor products," he added.

Spice Net Limited has a formidable presence in the passbook printer segment with over 80 percent market share. The PR2 passbook printer is a specialized front-office printer for bank, post offices and public authorities.

"Recently we bagged an order of Rs 1 crore from SBI, Chennai for the total branch mechanization," adds Krishna Kumar.