The man shares with Amir Moin & Neha Saraiya his career journey, the past, present and future of Fujifilm India, and why he loves India considerably
Kenichi Tanaka
MD, Fujifilm India
As we step into the plush interiors of Fujifim India’s office in Gurgaon, we contemplate how our delay in reaching this MD’s office – owing to the record rainfall in Delhi NCR – would affect the quality of our discussion. Much expecting to see a miffed Japanese face as we scamper through the corridor leading up to his office, what comes next is much pleasantly surprising. Sitting comfortably in his plush office, Kenichi Tanaka’s face splits into a smile on seeing us. Even before the ceremonial introductions, he confides to us the fact that the vagaries of Delhi’s rain and traffic delays are very well known to him. It hits us then that Kenichi Tanaka, MD of Fujifilm India, is perhaps more accepting of the Indian-way of functioning, than we ourselves. Here was a true blue global citizen! That said, despite being a globetrotter, Tanaka still deeply respects Japanese culture and values; something that keeps him rooted.
Tanaka started his corporate journey in 1978, when he joined Fujifilm. 32 years onwards, and Tanaka is one of the most respected multinational leaders in Fujifilm history. The respect bestowed upon him by his colleagues and peers for expanding Fujifilm in seemingly difficult geographies, is legendary. When Fujifilm decided to set up a wholly owned subsidiary in India 2 years ago, Tanaka was the man of arms that the Fuji top brass chose. The market was replete with top of the mind recall for arch rivals Canon, Sony, Nikon and Olympus. But Tanaka had this great self belief that their products could be targeted at the mid range consumer segment. He excitingly shares, “Sony and Canon are considered as premium while Olympus and Nikon market cameras with value for money. We saw a market in between – the mid range segment – and concluded that our high quality offerings and a reasonable pricing would make for a potent combination to tap this market.”
It was tough going for the first two years. Tanaka confesses that the situation was tough as consumers were not even award of their brand. The first hurdle therefore was to make consumers aware of brand Fujifilm. Dealers and retailers were not willing to budge an inch. However, thanks to extensive investments in training and development of sales force, Fujifilm soon established its own fraternity among the dealers. “We overcame the initial challenge of establishing our products with the retailers and dealers. But still, we have the task of replicating the same with our customers. To make sure this happens, our company is in the process of conducting training sessions round the year wherein, we train our sales force to handle both the customers as well as retailers and dealers,” says Tanaka.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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