iVoomi to invest around Rs. 190 crore this year for manufacturing activities in India

Chinese handset manufacturer iVoomi entered India in March 2017. To mark its entry into the market the company launched four new affordable smartphones priced between Rs 4000-Rs 10,000. However, since the launch, the company has announced several new devices further gaining some trust and credibility among the consumers in the consumers in the country.

Having said that, iVoomi is almost a year old and now the company is looking to invest around Rs. 180 crore in 2018 to rev up manufacturing activities locally, set up the supply chain and boost working capital.

"For 2018, We are planning to invest USD 30 million (about Rs 190 crore) in terms of manufacturing, research and development, supply chain and working capital. This is very much required. It will happen in next one or two quarters.

Basically, we are looking at 2018-19 timeline," iVoomi chief executive Ashwin Bhandari told PTI. He said the company has partnered with electronics manufacturing service firm Hipad Technology to make its mobile devices in India.

"We have already set up an assembly line where components on the motherboard of iVoomi devices will be mounted with a fully robotic process and involve only 4-5 laborers," Bhandari said. He added that the company has already invested around USD 26 million (around Rs 160 crore) in last 12 months to set up office and team in India and the next investment of USD 30 million is an additional investment.

"We are looking at 4 percent market share in Indian smartphone segment by the end of 2018. I see this happening positively. We are going to launch health band with pollution indicator soon, voice-controlled speaker, face recognition enabled smartphones that are going to push our sales," Bhandari said.

As mentioned earlier iVoomi makes low-cost 4G smartphones in the range of Rs 4000-Rs 10,000 a unit and plans to push sales accessories from March.

"We are now making 98 percent of our smartphones locally that we sell in India. We have already started shipping 'made in India' phones to Nepal. Now we are looking to ship made in India smartphones to Dubai. By 2020, we will start exporting to more countries from India," Bhandari said.