The ‘Make in India’ initiative is gathering a lot of response from smartphone companies which are investing for manufacturing plants in India. Earlier there was news about three other companies joining Lava in setting up a facility – Micromax, Celkon and Karbonn are the companies along with Lava which will be sharing the dedicated mobile handset and electronics facility at Tirupathi, Andhra Pradesh.
This facility was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi by laying a foundation stone. Lava’s International Chief Manufacturing Officer Sanjeev Agarwal, said, “The manufacturing plant, which will be operational in 2017, will target production capacity of five million phones a month once fully functional. Lava will invest Rs. 500 crores for this facility that will be set up over 20 acres of land allotted by the government,”.
The facility is said to ready to employ 12,000 people and over the next few years the company plans to develop the entire manufacturing ecosystem in India and promote localisation of components. Lava also has a manufacturing unit in Noida which was commenced six months back having a monthly capacity of one million units. Mr. Sanjeev Agarwal added, “We have already achieved manufacturing cost as competitive as that in China (from Noida unit). Moreover, with our robust infrastructure, we are delivering products with 50 percent better quality as compared to products made in China,”.
Lava is said to invest Rs. 2615 crores in India spread over the next 7 years to set up two manufacturing units. The company is aiming to achieve a capacity of 18 million handsets per month from these two manufacturing units. Xiaomi has tied up with Foxconn to manufacture smartphone in India with Foxconn set up in Andhra Pradesh. Even Gionee announcing its investment of $50 million by partnering with Dixon & Foxconn. OnePlus has also partnered with Foxconn to invest in India to assemble smartphones.
With the booming smartphone market in India along with the Make in India initiative inviting manufacturers, all the companies are trying to push in their investments to be a part of the multi-billion dollar business in India. According to research firm IDC, shipments to India grew by 44-percent to 26.5 million units in April-June 2015 quarter. The Indian handset market is said to overtake the US market as the second largest market in few years.
