Monday, September 06, 2010:
Encouraged with the initial experience of local mobile manufacturing, Spice Mobiles, the first Indian handset manufacturer to begin its local production at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh in March 2010, is all set to increase its local production. The manufacturer has shown its peers that India has the capability in mobile manufacturing, despite handicaps like the lack of a manufacturing ecosystem and government support, and the unavailability of the components. And its bold step has been an inspiration for other Indian mobile companies such as Micromax, Lava and Zen, who are also considering setting up manufacturing facilities in India next year.
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While sharing the initial experience of manufacturing at Baddi, Kunal Ahooja, director and CEO, Spice Mobiles, says, “The experience of manufacturing handsets locally at Baddi, has been quite positive. Our local production is comparable in every way -- in terms of quality, reliability and performance -- with its imported counterparts. We import our high end mobiles from China and other countries.”
Currently, the Baddi facility is producing 0.1 million basic handsets per month on a two- shift basis. The plant is built over a 3- acre plot and the factory building is around 23,000 sq.ft. “Starting with one assembly line, we are gearing up to add three more lines within this quarter to raise the production capacity to 0.4 million handsets per month on a two- shift basis,” informs Ahooja.
“Besides the tax and excise benefits in Baddi, our manufacturing strength has given us the ability to build and offer customised solutions as per customers' specific requirements by incorporating value- added services applicable for specific markets—domestic as well as for exports,” says Ahooja.
Planning to migrate to CKD
Mobile handset manufacturing is split into two sections—automatic and manual. Electronic printed circuit board (PCB) assembly needs to be automated and the final assembly and testing is a combination of manual and automatic processes. Says Ahooja, “As of now, we do the final assembly and testing (which is partly manual and partly automatic). Also, we are evaluating the merits of changing over to CKD and PCB assembly. We need to decide whether to do this activity in-house or subcontract it locally.”
Commenting on the profitability aspect, Ahooja laments, “Since the mobile handset components manufacturing industry is practically non-existent in the country, it will be beneficial and profitable to start manufacturing these in-house.”
-- Sandhya Malhotra
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