Printing Innovation Asia Issue 11 2020
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Kornit Digital readie growth in Asia Pac PIA spoke with Kornit Digital’s newly-appointed president for Asia Pacific, Ilan Elad, as he navigates his first tasks in his role for regional growth. By Sha Jumari. In October 2020, Kornit Digital appointed Ilan Elad as the new president for Asia Pacific. Elad takes over the role from Andy Yarrow, who held the position for almost two years. Elad joins Kornit at a critical time as the company is looking to expand its reach in the region. Currently based in Tokyo, Japan, Elad has experience working and living across continents, including the US, Europe and Asia. In the past 12 years, his specific focus has been on Asia and Oceania. Prior to Kornit, he served Daimler Trucks Asia since 2013, most recently as Vice President of Sales for Africa, SAARC, Oceania. Previously, I was co-Founder and CEO of Vision India, as well as Regional Managing Director NEU with telecommunications company Ciena. Its a high level view of my background, which is diversified industries, different size companies at different regions. I managed businesses in across Europe, Africa and APAC “With small to medium-sized companies, there is always that challenge to go from one level to the next. Ronen (CEO of Kornit Digital) was looking at this when he was looking for someone who has a lot of experience in building markets and teams and moving into areas where the company is looking to grow. The seeds has already been planted , and my
Ilan Elad
job is to take those seeds, focus on the growth opportunities and bring Kornit to the next Level in Asia Pacific.” The E-Commerce Opportunity “There are opportunities for a company like Kornit right now, and if you look at the sales and the stock price of the company reflected that potential, it has gone up so dramatically. This is because the perfect storm fits into our world,” said Elad. The e-commerce market is less about holding stock its more about more on supplying what people want. As stores closed doors due to lockdowns, consumers are turning to online for their shopping needs, giving e-commerce a major boost globally. “E-commerce has now doubled in the past three months not just in the US, but across the world. The e-commerce market is less about holding stock its more about more on supplying what people want. It's the business model where people want to print on demand. It’s not supply and demand anymore; it’s demand and supply,” said Elad. "COVID has changed our retail purchasing habits. A lot of retailers are moving online. And that’s where we come in. We really need to follow the trends and support the growth for retailers online, because that is where we believe the market is heading in the future with the major players. The
focus would be to find the biggest pain points that we can solve and go work with those customers hand in hand,” said Elad. Targeted approach for Growth in Asia In terms of evolving the e-commerce markets within the Asia Pacific region, Elad’s first focuses will be with China, followed by Japan, and then Australia and New Zealand. He highlighted that each market will require a different approach. In Japan and Korea, people want higher quality but affordable. “The top three e-commerce players in China are Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo. Part of the challenges that we’ve had over the years in China is that there are huge differences in quality. The consumer in many cases is willing to accept much lower quality
