Guy Gecht: "15% increased sales in India"

Guy Gecht, EFI’s CEO, was in Bengaluru for two days during which he analysed international markets on day one and tracked Indian markets on day two. Gecht spent both days in the Bengaluru-based centre, which is one of EFI’s largest locations. He pointed out that, more than 400 employees handle the company’s digital print workflow and MIS software development activities.

05 Dec 2014 | By Samir Lukka

Gecht shared his views during his opening remarks during the panel discussion, which had members of the EFI Advisory Council on the panel. The members included Faheem Agboatwala of Hitech, Prabuddha Dasgupta, a plastics packaging specialist, DJ Bangara of Autostriping, Rishi Kharalkar of Repro India, B Prasad from Printech and Manish Sharma from PrintO.The panel touched upon disruptive trends in the print industry in India.

Gecht pointed during the session, "India remains one of the best global markets for the sale of printing technologies. Last year, increased sales in India contributed to the 15% year-over-year revenue EFI saw in in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan." The USA is the biggest market for EFI, followed by China.

The EFI centre building located in Whitefield suburbs develops printing software improvements – a segment where EFI is the leading innovator for advanced graphic arts MIS/ERP, web-to-print and digital front-end technologies. This is primarily with the flagship Fiery brand which is handled by a young team of technocrats.

In addition to the UV inkjet printers where it is a market leader, India is an important market for EFI’s newest business opportunities, industrial ceramic decoration. On 22 September, EFI unveiled the first EFI-manufactured inks for the EFI Cretaprint printers, the world’s leading digital inkjet technology for the ceramics industry. EFI stands to establish a significant ink business in ceramics decoration, a market where India is significant as one of the world’s top three countries for the manufacture of digitally printed tiles.

Gecht touched upon LED printing for which he said there is "new awareness even in territories like China"; since the heat at which it cures is as low as 29 degrees and it is energy efficient and environmentally friendly.

In addition, Gecht was bullish about the OOH market which can "catch young people's imagination."

Sam Gulve, the global VP and GM for EFI India concluded, "We are clearly growing our footprint in India. We are in process of acquiring 30% additional space, we are also ramping our R&D capabilities both qualitatively and quantitatively and we are definitely  increasing our focus on sales activities for the region."