 "Huawei walks the talk on make in India")
Starting next month, the unit owned by Flex will start making Honor smartphone models. To start with, Flex will make 3 million devices for Huawei annually but the capacity can be increased any time as Flex has 100 acres that can be developed.
Apart from 1,500 people who will be hired by Flex, Huawei is also planning to recruit 3,000 employees for sales and marketing. Huawei now has an employee strength of 10,000 in India.
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Also as the volumes grow, 6,000 indirect jobs will be created, according to P Sanjeev, vice-president, sales, and India business head for Huawei.
Huawei entered India 16 years ago and inaugurated its largest overseas R&D centre in Bengaluru last February. The company also launched its global service centre in Bengaluru in August.
IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “India is becoming a hub for electronics manufacturing. This is the 40th mobile phone manufacturing unit that has been set up in India in the last two years.”
Huawei, the third largest smartphone manufacturer globally, considers India a priority market and will strengthen its after-sales services with over 200 service centres.
The Huawei consumer business group will also expand its distribution network by partnering 50,000 retail outlets by the end of 2016.
“Huawei India has the most localised operations and facilities. With smartphone manufacturing, we can firmly say that Make in India means design in India, manufacture in India and serve in India,” Huawei India CEO Jay Chen said.
Flex, too, has been present in India for the last 16 years. The company has manufacturing units in Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Kolkata and Chennai. Globally also Flex has been making phones for Huawei.
“We are thrilled to expand our partnership with Huawei. This is a testament of our commitment towards boosting local manufacturing,” said Jeff Reece, head of Flex’s telecom segment.
HUAWEI READY TO OFFER LATEST 4G TECHNOLOGY
Huawei said it was prepared to offer advanced 4G solutions to Indian mobile operators for rolling out networks.
“We will introduce our latest technology and solutions for Indian telecom operators. We will offer our best technology for 4G, 4.5G and even 5G,” Huawei India CEO Jay Chen said.
The government will commence spectrum auctions from October 1, from which it expects to garner Rs 5.66 lakh crore if all the air waves are sold at their base prices.