Hewlett-Packard India is squarely taking on the printer-ink refilling industry with a combination of easily available and cheap cartridges and an awareness campaign, detailing the negative effects of refilling.
According to Bharat Kharbanda, Country Category Manager, HP India, the refill industry has a nearly 30 per cent market share in both the ink and toner cartridge markets.
Hewlett-Packard does not authorize ‘refills’, which are mainly done by unorganised printer-ink stores, and claims that the practice damages both the cartridge and the printer.
The company makes its money mainly off the sale of ink and toner cartridges.
“The launch of affordable cartridges, starting at Rs. 499, two years ago has helped combat refilling. We’ve seen our market share rise from 38 to 47 per cent.
“Therefore, we plan on continuing with this approach and making all our printers compatible with this cartridge,” Mr. Kharbanda said, while addressing reporters at a conference here.
“Right now, only roughly half of our printers are compatible with the affordable cartridge, from now on all the printers we introduce will be able to use this. We aim to take back lost sales and win back our market share from the refillers,” he added.
The printer-and-computer major is also cracking down heavily on counterfeit cartridges; its Anti-Counterfeit Program (ACF) seized spurious equipment worth over $180,000 in India in the last few months alone.
