In line with the
government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, domestic handset vendor Karbonn will
invest Rs 200 crore to set up a manufacturing plant at Tirupati in Andhra
Pradesh.
Last week, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone for a
dedicated mobile handset and electronics manufacturing facility at Tirupati. Apart from Karbonn, the
facility will house brands like Micromax, Celkon and Lava.
“We are setting up an
integrated facility at Tirupati. The plant, which will be operational by
September next year, will have a manufacturing capacity of 500,000 units a
month,” Karbonn Chairman Sudhir Hasija told the media. He added that the
company will invest Rs 200 crore in the facility and employ 2,000 people to
start with.
“We currently have a
monthly capacity of 1.8-2 million units and we are looking at scaling this up
to 2.5 million by December next year,” he said. Over the next few years,
the plan is to develop the entire manufacturing ecosystem in India along with
component manufacturing, he added.
“By 2017, we will have miniscule imports as we
will manufacture in India rather than just assembling here,” Hasija said.
Karbonn has a unit in Noida that manufactures
feature phones. It is also setting up a facility in Haryana that is about
thrice the size of the Noida plant. Global handset makers like Samsung and
domestic players like Micromax and Spice have assembly units in India.
Recently, international players like Xiaomi,
Gionee and Asus have announced assembly units in India in partnership with
electronics major Foxconn in Andhra Pradesh.
Handset makers are looking to tap the
multi-billion dollar opportunity in India, which is one of the fastest growing
smartphone markets in the world. The Indian handset industry is poised to
overtake the US as the second-largest market in next few years. According to
research firm IDC, shipments in India grew 44 per cent year-on-year to 26.5
million units in April-June 2015 quarter.
Source: Agencies
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