NEW DELHI: Actor Minissha Lamba is the first Indian ambassador for Fujifilm to promote their new range of digital cameras, because the company feels she is very choosy about whatever she buys or does, and has carved a niche for herself in the films she has acted in.

Fujifilm national marketing manager Sriwant Wariz told indiantelevision.com that the company had decided to take on a brand ambassador after four years of launching its camera in India because it now felt it was ready with state-of-the-art cameras that were better than any others in the market.

He said the marketing budget had been increased during 2011-12 from Rs 450 million to Rs 650 million. Of this, he said 50 per cent will be ‘above the line‘, and he expected the first television commercials to be on air in the second quarter of the year.

He admitted that the company had for some time suffered in India last year because of the devastation by floods in Japan because of which shipping of cameras to India was affected and the expected share of nine per cent had come down to 7.1 per cent. The company which was at number three in India expected to take this share to ten per cent in the next year and to the top within three years.

He said the marketing would be aggressive, with strong consumer protection, brand visibility, and a zero per cent EMI scheme. Fujifilm had five main centres and around 500 showrooms around the country which will go up to 4,000.

It was already on YouTube and on Facebook where it had 20,000 fans and was aggressively shifting to digital marketing.

The diverse line-up of the cameras from the compact to the more professional X series also gave a lot of variety to the consumer.

Wariz said, "Apart from an instant recognition, the right brand ambassador who matches the brand personality can create lot of trust and aura around the brand. Fujifilm as a company is extremely quality conscious, is young (in Indian digital camera business) and with diverse offerings, is trying to carve a niche for itself. We found Minissha with similar value system and hence decided on her as our brand ambassador. Minissha Lamba is a fine actress of new generation who in a short span of time has created a reputation for being very quality conscious and professional, evident from her choice of meaningful movies. Beside this she is a very popular face today and we are sure this association will help us enhance our brand equity greatly."

Lamba said she had been using Fujifilm from her childhood and, therefore, her acceptance came very naturally. "I am very passionate about photography. It‘s great to see the wonderful new cameras of Fujifilm with great features and cool looks. I am eagerly looking forward to using my new Fujifilm JZ100," she added.

According to Fujifilm India MD K Tanaka, a sum of Rs 2 billion had been put into research and development and Fujifilm digital cameras were the lightest because they did not use mirrors which made other cameras heavy.

He said that the smart phone had affected the business only to a small extent since the consumer today was more concerned about the lenses than about megapixels. The latest 16 digital cameras being introduced in the Indian market had introducing Interchangeable technology. "At Fujifilm, our effort is always to bring the latest and innovative technology in our product with the support of R&D team.With our latest addition X-Pro1 we are entering into the Professional and semi-professional camera market," he added.

Ranging from hi-tech pro-level models to fashionable point-and-shoot compacts, the spring collection has a series of models. The collection includes following cameras: HS25EXR, F660EXR (EXR Series), T350 (T series), JX500, JZ100 (J series), AX550 (A series), SL260, S4200, S2980 (S series), L30 (L series) and C25 (C series).