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BANGALORE, Oct. 25

WeP Peripherals, (formerly Wipro ePeripherals Ltd) today announced that it had crossed the 1 million mark in printers. The MAIT President, Mr S. Devarajan, held the company as an example of a survivor in what is considered a tough market in India - hardware design and manufacture.

The largest employee-owned company, as it likes to call itself, has more plans in the offing. It has come up with a new concept called business printing outsourcing (BPO), taking off from its `print and save' service, where customers can pay for pages printed rather than invest in a printer.

WeP is offering to completely handle all printing requirements for customers either on their own premises or outside for a fee.

Services contributed 25 per cent of the company's total gross margins, said the Managing Director and CEO, Mr Ram N. Agarwal. In the next three years, services are expected to continue around 40 per cent, with the focus remaining on products, which will bring in the other 60 per cent.

WeP's three focus areas in hardware products are storage, networking, and personal mobility and convenience. After printers, the company is looking at growth in the UPS segment. The company adopts the same strategy for all products. "We start with trading, and when the volumes catch up, we move into manufacturing and then into design," Mr Agarwal said. In the UPS segment, it has already entered the manufacturing stage.

For 2002-03, Mr Agarwal predicted a 10-15 per cent growth in DMPs. "There is still a growing demand for it in India, China, Russia, and parts of Europe," he said. WeP expects exports to contribute 20 per cent of its revenues.

Another acquisition was on the cards for 2002, he said.

The MAIT Executive Director, Mr Vinnie Mehta, said that the first quarter of this year had shown an encouraging trend. As far as hardware sales were concerned, the industry had already done 60 per cent of what it had in the first-half of last year, he said.

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