Xiaomi Expanding in India, Planning Four New Factories

On April 9, Xiaomi announced today that it will open three new mobile phone factories in India. At the same time, the power bank factory Xiaomi operates with another company have also begun to produce mobile phones. So far, Xiaomi has set up altogether six mobile phone factories in India.

SEE ALSO: How Xiaomi Beat Samsung to Become India’s Largest Smartphone Brand

Xiaomi will also work with Foxconn to set up the first printed circuit board (PCB) assembly factory in India, marking another important achievement for Xiaomi‘s localization strategy.

Manu Jain, Vice President of Xiaomi International and General Manager of Xiaomi India states that Xiaomi‘s high-quality, well-designed products at reasonable prices have been instrumental in disrupting the Indian smartphone industry,

I believe we will continue to play a key role in transforming India into a global manufacturing hub.

Xiaomi announced these significant progresses at the first supplier investment summit held in India. More than 50 global smartphone component suppliers attended the summit. At the meeting, Xiaomi briefed them on India’s manufacturing ecosystem and hoped to help them build production facilities in India. If all the invited suppliers were to set up factories in India, it become the largest investment in the history of India’s electronic manufacturing industry and would create a huge number of jobs. The total investment is expected to exceed 150 billion rupees (around 2.5 billion USD), generating employment for over 50,000 people.

In response to the “Make in India” government initiative, Xiaomi announced their plan to start Indian local production in 2015. In the same year, Xiaomi established their first factory with Foxconn. In 2017, Xiaomi set up their second mobile phone factory and the first power bank factory. So far, more than 95% of the phones sold in India are made in India.

Xiaomi‘s three new factories are also established in collaboration with Foxconn. They are located in the industrial parks of Sri and Andhra Pradesh in India, as well as the new industrial park in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. The exciting factories have over 10,000 employees, of which more than 95 percent are women as all assembly work is completed by female employees. The new factories will continue to elevate production capacities.

The new PCB factory marks Xiaomi as one of the pioneers to set up local assembly lines in India. PCB is one of the most important components in smart phones, accounting for nearly half of the cost of the entire handset. Xiaomi plans to increase the proportion of local production of circuit boards to nearly 100% in the third quarter of 2018.

Xiaomi has become the number one smartphone manufacturer in India in the past three years. According to IDC, a market intelligence company, Xiaomi‘s market share in India has reached 26.8% in the last quarter of 2017. Xiaomi is also the number one online phone brand in India with a market share of 57%. In terms of offline sales, Xiaomi ranks second with a market share of 11.2%.