Ricoh India to Increase Prices Upon Rupee Depreciation

Ricoh India Ltd., a leading player in Printing, Document Solutions and IT Services, recently announced a 5% to 8% increase in the prices of their office products and services. Tetsuya Takano, Managing Director and CEO of Ricoh India, said, “The Indian Rupee (INR) has dropped remarkably and is at a record low of Rs. 60.70 vis-à-vis USD. In spite of the huge depreciation of Indian Rupees, we have been trying to hold on to our sales prices to our customers and channel partners, hoping that the situation would improve soon. The depreciation of the INR is more than 12% since March 2013 which directly impacted the cost of imports of all our products, spare parts and consumables. We are now constrained to increase the prices of our office products and services by around 5% to 8%, so as to at least partially cover the impact.”

Mr. Takano added, “India is a high growth market for Ricoh and we have ambitious plans here.” He noticed that from around Rs 3 billion (about USD $50 million) in fiscal year (FY) 2011, the company planned to expand to Rs 10 billion (about USD $168 million) by FY2013. Also, during the fiscal year ending on 31 March 2013, Ricoh has already touched revenue of Rs 6.33 billion (about USD $107 million), increasing around 47% year-over-year. Further, Mr. Takano stated that Ricoh will continue to bring the best of technology at affordable prices to their customers for rapid expansion across their businesses segments.

Regarding the potential effect of price increases on sales, Mr. Takano said customers are now looking for true value for money proposition rather than just low price tags. So he does not think this price increase will have any major impact on sales.

The price increase was brought into effect starting July 1, 2013.