Intex to set up 1000 crore plant in Greater Noida

NEW DELHI: Mobile phone maker Intex will invest Rs 1,000 crore to set up a manufacturing facility in Greater Noida as it looks to end dependence on imports to meet its demand.

The 20 lakh square feet facility will be ready in three years and will have a capacity to manufacture 35 million phones. It will also manufacture LED televisions, washing machines and computer peripherals.

The company already has a manufacturing facility in Noida, besides those in Jammu and Baddi in Himachal Pradesh.

“Intex already has a sizeable manufacturing base in the country and there are aggressive plans to consolidate the manufacturing activities even further,” said Amitabh Khurana, head (manufacturing), Intex Technologies. The company is already making about a million phones every month. Apart from manufacturing, the company will invest Rs 500 crore in research and development over the next few years.

The firm, which is aiming two-fold growth in revenue to Rs 8,000 crore in the current financial year with 85% of it coming from mobile division, closed 2014-15 with a turnover of Rs 4,000 crore and about 75% revenue came from mobile division. Consumer durables and IT products accounted for the rest. “Intex has shown robust performance in the mobile phone market during the past one year and has surpassed competition in past three months vis-a-vis shipments and local manufacturing (combined),” said Sanjay Kalirona, head (mobile business), Intex Technologies.

India is one of the fastest-growing smartphone markets globally and is expected to replace the US as the second largest market by 2017, as people switch to smartphones from feature phones and gradually upgrade to 4G-enabled phones.

In the April-June 2015 quarter, smartphone shipment in India grew 44% to 26.5 million units from the year-ago period, according to research firm IDC.