The company is partnering with Foxconn for the three new smartphone plants which will be located in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and a new campus in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. The company will now also locally manufacture PCBA units in India.
Xiaomi today commenced its Supplier Investment Summit in India, where over 50 global smartphone component suppliers are taking part. The smartphone manufacturer has announced opening three new smartphone plants in the country along with its first Surface Mount Technology (SMT) plant in Chennai, which will manufacture printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) units in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, in partnership with Foxconn. With the Supplier Investment Summit, Xiaomi says it wants to educate the participating component suppliers of the manufacturing ecosystem in the country and aims to help them in setting up manufacturing units in India. The company also adds that if all the suppliers agree on setting up units in in India, it will create a “big pool of jobs and would potentially bring in an added investment of over 15,000 crore rupees ($2.5 billion) and create as many as 50,000 job opportunities in India.”
Vice President of Xiaomi Global, Manu Jain said, “Xiaomi’s high-quality, well-designed products at honest prices have been instrumental in disrupting the Indian smartphone industry. In 2015 we extended our long-term commitment to the Indian market by joining the 'Make in India' programme. Today we are deepening this commitment with three more smartphone factories and our first SMT plant dedicated towards local manufacturing of PCBA units. Xiaomi is one of the pioneers in the country to start local assembly of PCBAs, and I believe we will continue to play a key role in transforming India into a global manufacturing hub.”
The summit was inaugurated by Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog; Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary, DIPP and Deepak Bagla, CEO, Invest India. The three new smartphone plants are in partnership with Foxconn and are located in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and a new campus in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. The factories with Foxconn now employ more than 10,000 people, of which more than 95 percent are women. With the new SMT plant dedicated towards local manufacturing of PCBA units in Chennai, Xiaomi has now become the first company in the country to start locally assembling PCBAs. PCBA is the process of soldering or assembly of electronic components to a PCB or printed circuit board and SMT is a method for producing electronic circuits in which the components are mounted or placed directly on to the surface of PCBs.
PCBA contributes to nearly 50 per cent of the value of the phone and is one of the most important components of the smartphone and Xiaomi expects to ramp up its production close to 100 per cent of its locally-produced phones within the third quarter of 2018. According to Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint, Xiaomi's PCBA announcement should make it the second largest brand in terms of value addition in India after Samsung. "The move should increase Xiaomi's value addition from single digit to close to 15 per cent," Pathak said.
Xiaomi already has two smartphone manufacturing plants in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and says that more than 95 percent of its smartphones being sold in India are assembled in the country. When the company launched the Mi Power Bank 2i in the country, it announced that the device is ‘Made in India’ at the company’s first accessory manufacturing facility situated in Noida, in partnership with Hipad.
With inputs from IANS
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