Small and medium telecom and infotech companies in Kolkata are on a hiring spree and plan to expand in 2009.
GeePee Infotech and Xenitis Group, two medium-sized, privately held electronic and telecom companies in the city, are planning to launch new handsets. Fresh recruitment is also planned in 2009.
According to Bijay Agarwal, managing director, GeePee Infotech: “We are planning to launch touch-phones in January at Rs 7,000. This will compete with i-phone.”
GeePee has launched its GSM handsets at Rs 994 and are available without a bundling offer. According to Agarwal: “The phone has a colour display, audio and video players. We are manufacturing the phones in Shenzhen, China.”
Currently, only CDMA phones are priced below Rs 1,000 and are bundled with connections.
The black and white GSM phones offered by Vodafone Magic Box are also bundled with connections and cost Rs 1,199.
More From This Section
“We are also looking at hiring not less than 100 people for setting up a research and development centre, preferably in West Bengal. We are talking to companies in Japan and China for component supply and technology partnership for a handset manufacturing plant we are planning to set up in 2009,” Agarwal added.
“Telecom has not been impacted so much and therefore our sales in both urban and rural Bengal have been growing equally. In 2009, we plan to go pan-India with our handsets. We are also going to sell our handsets in Bangladesh, Kenya and Gulf countries from 2009,” Agarwal claimed.
Although Agarwal did not divulge sales figures, he had earlier said the company’s intention was to sell 50,000-75,000 of these handsets per month.
Xenitis Group, on its part, is planning to expand capacity at its manufacturing facility in West Bengal in 2009 for its infotech business.
According to Santanu Ghosh, CMD of Xenitis, “Our current factory production is booked. We work as the original equipment manufacturer for around 80 per cent of the products manufactured at our factory. We have to make additional investments in 2009 to expand the capacity as we intend to launch sub-Rs 500 mobile handsets after March.”
Xenitis will also add around 250 employees next year, in addition to the current strength of 1,300. “The infotech division should touch Rs 1,250 crore by March 2009, up from Rs 850 crore last fiscal,” Ghosh added. Xenitis Group had invested Rs 250 crore in setting up mobile handset manufacturing factory at Hooghly district in West Bengal.
Xenitis Group’s automobile division which sells mobikes currently, will also touch a turnover of Rs 280 crore by March 2009, from the current turnover of Rs 150 crore, thanks to stable sales of its low-cost mobikes, especially in rural areas.