Mumbai: The writing instruments/pen market has a number of players – operating in the range of economy and premium products, and in terms of offerings from ballpoint pens, to liquid ink pens, gel pens, and even pigmented dye pens.

Pilot Pen, the renowned global writing instruments brand, announced its momentous entry as a sole entity in India, solidifying its commitment to creating an extensive distribution channel and formidable presence in the Indian market. The grand unveiling event took place at The Leela Palace Gurugram on 24 July, marking a significant milestone in Pilot Pen's expansion journey.

With a vision of providing an exceptional writing experience, and crafting pens that would set a benchmark in the industry, PILOT established itself as one of the fastest-growing companies in the domain. They also have a dedicated R&D center that is equipped with Japanese test and measurement equipment to meet international quality standards. The group has been thriving in its dedicated domain owing to its continued efforts to strengthen the sales network and build production globally.

Addressing the press meet, PPIN Private Limited MD Hiroki Kisaichi brought out, “Today, 71 per cent of the Indian population is using smartphones. The overall economy has grown over the last couple of years. With their wide range of products such as roller ball pens, foundation pens, ball pens, markers, and more, they cater to the diverse needs of customers across India. Our current distribution network is around 60,000 and the target is to touch approximately 1,00,000 in the next one to 1.5 years.”

In an exclusive chat with Indiantelevision.com, PPIN Private Limited MD Hiroki Kisaichi and PPIN Private Limited VP - sales & marketing GP Srivastava delved into India as a significant market for the company, the focus of digital media and print media in their communication strategy, and more.

Srivastava mentioned, “The market size of the total pen category is about Rs 500 crore and the entire category, as well as Pilot Pen India, is growing at a rate of 30 per cent YoY. The division between the premium functional category vs the economy category is about 50:50. The premium-gifting category is slightly different, and pens upto Rs 1 lakh exist too – it is a very niche market. Even though we have options in the premium gifting range, we do not foresee as much growth in this category – significant growth is expected in the premium functionality category.”

In terms of the target group, he points out that the company is looking at targeting students – from schools and colleges, and also office-goers and corporates. “Out of these, 60 per cent of our sales would come from students, and the rest from office-goers and corporates.”

He adds further, “The strongest market for the company in India is the Northern region, and is further looking to tap the Eastern region. Through our R&D, we have also figured out that the tier II and tier III markets are growing.”

“We have signed on a leading agency to partner with us for our advertising and marketing needs. Though, we haven’t bifurcated the amount of spends yet for each of the mediums that we would be utilising, we are looking at a media mix of digital media and social media, along with print. We are not considering TV as our target group is present primarily on OTT and such mediums, rather than mainstream television. Value-wise, print would be more – but content-wise, digital and social media would be more,” Srivastava talks about the media mix for the upcoming communication strategy of the brand.

Emphasising the challenges that the company has faced and the lessons and learnings that they have imbibed since the last 40  years, of partnering with various other distributors, Kisaichi elaborates, “From our 40 years of experience, we learned a lot from various distributors. What is the consumer demand and mindset in India, how should we distribute our products – these were the huge challenges that we faced as a Japanese company coming to India. But we have the background knowledge of the association with our previous distributors, and according to that we have set up our first manufacturing plant.”

Srivastava pipes in, “The major learning for us is to know about the size of the pen market in India – how big India is, and how important India is as a market for us.”

Kisaichi points out that for Pilot Pen, Japan is the largest market, followed by the US, Europe, and China. India is poised to be the fifth-largest market for the brand.

Talking about retail expansion, Srivastava understands, “Our major chunk of the business comes from general trade – mainly 80 per cent. As we all know, India is a traditionally retail-oriented market, and it is expected to be so for some time. Around 20 per cent would come in from modern trade, e-commerce, etc.  We are also looking at launching our own EBOs – we are into the premium range of pens, and we have seen that our competitive brands are present at locations such as airports etc. Though the plan for EBOs is on the cards, it is not something that we will look into immediately or within this year – we will consider this later.”

Pilot Pen’s main competitor in India is Uniball. Some of the other brands have a product or two, but none of their other products is in direct competition with any of PPIN’s SKUs.

Talking about the exclusive technology used by PPIN, Srivastava tells, “In terms of the technology used, we only use liquid ink, and not gel or pigmented dyes. In terms of innovation, we have launched Frixion – across the globe, this product is doing tremendously well. However, in India the size of the market for this product is very minuscule. This product needs communication. Retailers do not have the time to explain to the consumer about the product, so as a company we had to do something about that because on the other hand, globally, other companies have done it. In France, Frixion has replaced the wooden pencil – so you can imagine the kind of potential this product has.”

“So, there are few products for which we couldn’t garner the full potential in the Indian market, so first we need to focus on those products. In our communication, we will focus primarily on Frixion and the V7 Cartridge (a refillable pen priced at Rs 60) which is targeted at students,” he goes on.

Deliberating on the future launches, Srivastava wraps up, “We plan to launch 100 SKUs in the coming times – in the first year, the number would be comparatively less, and post that we would be launching in phases.”