NEW DELHI: Chinese smartphone maker iVoomi plans to make phones in India with initial investment of Rs 250 crore and export handsets to countries like China, Taiwan and Korea.
The company expects to have its manufacturing facility in the country by the first quarter of 2018.
"We are waiting for the day when we will have manufacturing in India and ship (products) to Korea, China and Taiwan. We want to develop environment and infrastructure here where we can deliver product to these countries,"iVoomi India CEO Ashwin Bhandari told.
"In the first quarter of 2018, we plan to have our captive plant," he said.
The company plans to invest Rs 250 crore initially in the manufacturing facility, smartphone assembly and product development, he said.
"We will initially have our phone assembled at two plants in India. These are third party plants. We are in talks with Foxconn and VSun. Next year, we expect to start our own manufacturing unit," Bhandari said.
The company entered India around March with the launch of its 4G VoLTE smartphone iV505 for Rs 3,999. iVoomi has plans to sell 4G smartphone in the price range of Rs 4,000 to Rs 10,000 a unit.
"This is the segment which has seen the highest growth. We want to provide this segment new products with unique designs and features. We expect to capture 4 per cent market share in Indian smartphone segment by the end of 2018 which should help us in generating revenue of Rs 1,000 crore," Bhandari said.
He said that company will focus on product quality and use minimum cost communication channel to communicate about the product so that price of the product is kept low.
"We don't want to paint all the walls in the country and then escalate the price of the product. We will use the right channel to reach out to our target customers," Bhandari said.
iVoomi plans to set up 500-600 service centres across the country that will be managed by its captive nodal care offices.
"Every nodal care centre will manage 30-50 service centres. We will ensure that once a product issue reaches our nodal care, then it should be serviced within 24 hours.
"In phase 1, we will use multi-brand service centres as customer interface. By mid 2018, we will have around 110 exclusive service centres and then go for next 300 centres," Bhandari said.
He said that company will start selling products in select market namely Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Kolkata.
The company plans to hire 150 people for sales and after sales services.
"We will be building system, processes, software to use minimal human resource. We will target to hire close to 150 people by mid of next year. This will be only product, after sales, and sales. Post we switch on the product development, we will have additional manpower," Bhandari said.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com