Vivo Inaugurates Its First Manufacturing Unit In Greater Noida

In a major push to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India and Digital India initiative, Vivo Mobile India has commenced manufacturing its smartphones in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The unit will also empower India with new job creation and most importantly decreasing Vivo’s dependence on imports.

Chinese handset maker Vivo has said that its new products will see a drop in prices as it launched its 30,000 square feet assembly facility in the special economic zone (SEZ) at Greater Noida.

“Vivo’s assembly plant will see an investment of Rs. 125 crore and will create employment for 2,200 jobs. The assembly facility, which has a production capacity of 10 lakh units monthly, will currently produce 1.5 phones with immediate scaling up ability of three lakh units,” said Alex Feng, CEO of ViVo Mobiles India.

The company sold 14 million handsets in China and one million in Indian market in 2015, the company said.

The company will spend Rs 200 crore on marketing during the calendar year 2016. Half of this will be spent on Indian Premier League. It recently bagged sponsorship for the popular sporting event for two years.

This facility will help to cut down 13.8 per cent of import duty and with Indian government’s modified inventive special package scheme (MSIPS), we will be able to cut down the prices of handsets from 5 to 10 per cent, Feng added.

The government of India needs to do more in terms of logistics, labour, hardware and software to attract the components makers coming to India to achieve complete in-house manufacturing rather than just assembling, the company said.

The workforce needs training and we would ensure proper and specialised training for them, Feng added on the quality of workforce available in India.

Currently, Vivo has no online partner but has 30 exclusive stores with 10,000 outlets in 400 cities across 20 states. It has 25 exclusive service centres which it wants to expand to 200 by the end of 2016.