HP to enter the digital publishing business in India

HP will be announcing its entrance into the digital publishing business in India by June-end with a formal announcement in Bangalore. The company will bring its entire end-to-end solutions under the Indigo brand. This new business will be part of HP's Imaging and Printing Group. 

Revealing this, Steve Donegal, Commercial Development Manager, Digital Publishing Solutions, HP says, "We will the first vendor to offer complete end-to-end solutions for input, processing and output for digital business. Existing players in India either have some components, but not the entire family of products."

HP will appoint one national distributor and 10 solution partners. These partners were trained on Indigo's products technology and service aspects at Drupa, an annual global convention of the digital publishing industry held in Dusseldorf last month. "Since these are not mass-market products, we want to operate through a smaller channel network. We will add numbers only if we find that it offers value to our offerings," Steve clarifies. 

It will also open a demo center so partners can bring in their customers and show them the efficiency of the products and how it can add value to their existing work environment. Customers will also be shown the RoI and breakeven time in terms of their technology and their profits.

HP will address the top profile players in the digital publishing industry, rather than the jobbers or small companies that take outsourced work on demand. HP will rely on its existing service infrastructure to support the Indigo range. Though partners are trained for trouble-shooting, the service will be taken care by HP, since these are technologically advanced products, which cost upwards of $50,000. 

The Indigo family is over two decades old, but Steve explains that HP wanted to entrench itself well globally before entering the Indian market. "India is a very unforgiving country, especially if you can't support the products. We wanted to ensure that all our deliverables were in place before we came into the market," he states.

VINITA BHATIA