Chinese start-up to make in India smart phones

Bengaluru: Chinese technology start-up OnePlus said on Monday it would make in India smart phones through contract manufacturing at Taiwanese Foxconn's Rising Stars factory in Andhra Pradesh's Sri City.

"Producing smart phones in India is a major decision we have taken so far, as the country is one of our biggest market worldwide," OnePlus founder and chief executive Pete Lau said in a statement here.

The two-year-old company, based at Shenzen in China's Guangdong province, is a subsidiary of Oppo Electronics, co-founded by Lau and Carl Pei in 2013.

It hopes to roll out first batch of smart phones for sale from this year-end and set up its own production facility within a year of launching them to make its operations cost effective and release products faster.

"Since we forayed into India, we received five-million registrations for our latest smart phone OnePlus 2. Local production will help us to address supply chain issues for products across the country," said its India general manager Vikas Agarwal.

Foxconn has recently unveiled its second manufacturing facility outside Taiwan at Sri City, an integrated business city, in Chittoor district of neighbouring Andhra. The first outside facility is in Brazil.

The Foxconn facility will eventually have an installed capacity to produce 500,000 units per month and "generate direct employment to about 1,000 skilled workers, giving support to the central government's 'Make in India' initiative", Agarwal said.

Lauding the start-up for choosing to make smart phones in India at Foxconn's facility in the Rayalaseema region, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said its presence would catapult the state as a hot destination for local manufacturing in the country.