Make in India seems to be the flavor of the season. The latest organization indulging into it is the Indian consumer electronics firm Micromax Informatics. The authorities at Micromax have confirmed that they will start manufacturing all of its phones in India by 2018. As of now, Micromax manufactures it phones in China where the late surge in inflation has made the company take the decision to shift its production unit in India.
Rahul Sharma,co-founder, Micromax said with less than two-thirds of its products are assembled in India currently and full home production now made economic sense given rising Chinese labour costs and a growing network of local suppliers of components.
“In the next 24 months, 100% will be here. There was no ecosystem in India. Slowly, slowly we are attracting one,” he told Reuters in an interview this week. “In terms of manpower, India is far cheaper (than China).”
Micromax, with its low-cost Smartphones, has become widely popular in the economical segment of the Indian Smartphone market and has observed continuous growth in its market share since the past couple of years. It is believed that the company is planning to invest around 3 billion rupees for the production unit set up in India. According to the latest statistics, Micromax sells most number of Smartphones in India after the leaders Samsung.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to expand the electronics manufacturing industry in India to boost employment and in August manufacturing giant Foxconn announced a US$5bil investment commitment in India.
The company authorities said in April they were looking to raise capital from investors or through a stock listing as it expands into new businesses like personal computing. It has held talks with investors led by Japan’s SoftBank Corp to sell a stake, sources said in March.
However, Sharma declined to comment on talks with investors but said Micromax was not currently looking to raise fresh equity or debt capital. “We are cash positive. We don’t need it (funding),” he said.
Yu, the company which is also partly owned by Micromax launched their latest High-end smartphone, the Yu Yutopia yesterday in India.
