Vivo announced that it will invest INR35 billion to expand smartphone production capacity and will start exporting devices from 2022, underscoring the role India plays as a regional mobile production hub in a China-plus-one world supply chain.
The Economic Times and The Indian Express citing Paigam Danish, director of business strategy at Vivo India, reported that Vivo India will invest INR35 billion in two years to double annual smartphone production capacity from 60 million to 120 million units. Vivo India will also start exporting made-in-India smartphones to other markets from 2022.
Accordingly, Vivo India will increase its manufacturing employee base from 10,000 to 15,000 by 2023. As to local component content, Vivo India will increase local sourcing of chargers from 60% to 75% by 2024, and 65% of displays will be sourced locally by 2023.
Vivo India announced its 10-year investment plan in 2018. At first, Vivo India set an investment target of INR40 billion but then increased that target to INR75 billion in August 2019. Danish said Vivo has already invested INR19 billion till 2021.
Major smartphone brands have expanded their mobile phone production capacity in India. Applicants approved under India's PLI scheme for large scale manufacturing (such as Samsung Electronics, Foxconn, and Wistron) have been expanding production in India. The Elec reported Samsung is planning to shift part of its mobile production from Vietnam to India and Indonesia, aiming to increase production capacity in India to 93 million units a year by 2022.
India's Ministry of Electronics & IT, in the second volume of its Vision Document on Electronics Manufacturing, set an electronics output target of US$300 billion by 2026, of which US$126.9 billion is to be contributed by mobile phone manufacturing.
According to statistics from India's Ministry of Commerce, India's mobile phone export value was US$3,104.52 million in fiscal 2021 (April 2020 to March 2021) but increased to US$3,675.42 million between April and December 2021 despite a shorter period and the lockdown due to COVID-19 between April and June 2021.
