Ziox to invest Rs 500 mn in Noida plant, eyes Rs 6 bn turnover in FY19

Noida is emerging as the red-hot destination for cell phone companies

Handset maker Ziox Mobiles plans to invest more than Rs 500 million in its greenfield manufacturing plant in Noida flanking the National Capital Region (NCR).

The company is identifying suitable land for the project and talking to the Uttar Pradesh government agencies in this regard, company CEO Deepak Kabu told Business Standard here today. “The whole process would be completed in this fiscal and the work on the proposed plant would begin thereafter.”

The new plant would basically assemble semi-knocked down (SKD) mobile phone kits imported from China. At present, Ziox runs a unit in Delhi and owns R&D facilities in China and in the national capital. “Once our new plant is operational, we would set up an R&D facility in Noida as well.”

Clocking monthly sales of about 500,000 handsets, Ziox is eyeing a turnover of Rs 6 billion during 2018-19. The company primarily caters to the entry-level feature and smartphones, which are hawked both in physical stores as well as e-commerce.

In UP, Ziox posts monthly sales of about 75,000 units, which the company plans to double in near future. Ziox is the arm of Sun Airvoice Private Limited, which has interests in real estate and hospitality.

Over the years, the Noida region has emerged as the most preferred location for the mobile phone companies to set up shop. Recently, Vivo and Haier had also shown interest to set up their units in the region and their officials had called upon UP industry minister Satish Mahana in Lucknow seeking support for their expansion roadmap. At present, Noida region has combined capacity to churn out about 150 million devices per annum.

While Haier is looking to invest over Rs 32 billion in a greenfield plant in Noida, Vivo had sought allocation of about 150 acres of land in Greater Noida near the Yamuna Expressway for their proposed mega integrated mobile phone unit.

Mahana has assured all help to companies looking to invest in the electronics manufacturing sector in the state. He said UP had the largest consumer market for any consumer durable company.

At the UP Investors Summit 2018 on 21-22 February, the Yogi Adityanath government had netted investment proposals of Rs 55 billion in electronics manufacturing sector. In June 2017, Korean electronics giant Samsung had announced to invest almost Rs 50 billion to double its mobile phone manufacturing capacity in UP by 2020, especially in the backdrop of tough competition from Chinese brands. Samsung wants to make India its manufacturing and export hub to cater the European, West Asian and African smartphone markets.

  

Currently, the domestic mobile phone market is pegged at 300 million annually, of which almost 50% units are smartphones. The Centre has estimated this space to touch 500 million devices by 2019-20.