iaomi expands smartphone, smart TV manufacturing in India

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SME Times News Bureau | 25 Feb, 2021
Smartphone maker Xiaomi on Thursday said it has roped in two more contract manufacturers, China's BYD and DBG, for smartphone manufacturing in India, besides hiring Radiant Appliances and Electronics in Telangana to add to its smart TV manufacturing capacity in the country.

Xiaomi started smartphone manufacturing in India five years ago and smart TV manufacturing about two years ago.

The DBG manufacturing facility is already operational in Haryana and the BYD facility in Tamil Nadu will be completed within the first half of this year, said Manu Kumar Jain, Managing Director, Xiaomi India.

Xiaomi already has three smartphone manufacturing plants in India in partnership with Foxconn and Flex spread across Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

"With these two new smartphone manufacturing partners, we now have presence across northern and southern parts of the country," Jain told IANS.

"With the DBG factory going live we expect our production capacity to increase by about 20 per cent within this quarter. This factory went live two months ago. The BYD factory should be operational within the first half of this year and we expect the capacity to further increase," he said.

The Xiaomi India MD said that the new manufacturing facilities will help the biggest smartphone seller in the country to meet the "massive demand" and help the company stay protected in case of any future supply chain disruptions in situations like a pandemic or other such events.

He said that while over 99 per cent of its smartphones are already manufactured in India, majority of the smartphone components are also now locally manufactured in the country or locally sourced, including the PCBA (printed circuit board assembly, also called the mother-board), battery, sub-board and chargers, among other components.

These components are being manufactured by partners such as Sunny India, NVT, Salcomp, LY Tech and Sunvoda, among others.

"If you add all of this together then approximately 75 per cent of the phone is already covered from a value perspective," he said, adding that the company is also working with partners to manufacture the camera panel locally in India.

"Total number of people working in our smartphone factories as part of the Xiaomi family has gone up to 30,000."

As mentioned earlier, Xiaomi also added one new TV manufacturing partner, Radiant.

"We are now locally manufacturing 100 per cent of our TVs sold in India," Jain said.

Xiaomi started TV manufacturing in India in partnership with Dixon Technologies about two years ago.

About 1,000 people are working across these two factories, Xiaomi said.

In 2020, Xiaomi India and its partners generated employment for 10,000 new individuals taking the entire workforce count to 60,000.