Nokia India in the last two years had managed to scale up its operations to produce 8 million handsets a month. Between January and March 2008, the company produced 25 million handsets. Commercial production at this plant started at the beginning of 2006 with 550 workers.
Talking to the media during a guided tour of the plant, Nokia India's director operations, Sachin Saxena said that projections made in terms of investments and workforce at the time beginning of its commercial production in 2006 has been overshot. "When we decided to set up the plant in Chennai, we had promised the state government about investing $150 million and employing around 1500 people in four years." The current facility already has $210 million invested in it and houses 8000 workers, of which 1000 are temporary workers. Nearly 70 per cent of the workforce are women at the Nokia SEZ.
The seven vendors who employ nearly 7000 people at the Nokia SEZ are Salcomp, Aspocomp, Foxconn, Perlos, Jabil, Laird and Wintek and supply chargers, circuit boards, mechanical parts like keypads, antenna and liquid crystal display panels. A