Chinese handset maker Xiaomi is looking at expanding its manufacturing base in India, to have not just smartphones, but even other products manufactured locally.

“We want to open manufacturing for more products, the question is just about scale,” Xiaomi India head and Vice-President Manu Kumar Jain told BusinessLine . “We started importing because initially we go small; but once we scale up, we are open to setting up manufacturing lines for many other categories such as Mi (fitness) bands, power banks, cases, etc. On other categories such as air purifiers and routers, we’ll be open to setting up manufacturing plants.”

Xiaomi currently has two manufacturing facilities in India. The two facilities in Visakhapatnam and Sri City in Andhra Pradesh are operated by Foxconn, and produce over 95 per cent of the mobilephones the company sells in the country. Although Xiaomi doesn’t reveal its actual manufacturing numbers, the company says it currently produces one smartphone each second at the two factories, which are running at near capacity.

However, all other products, including fitness bands, power bands, phone covers, routers and air purifiers that Xiaomi sell in India, are fully imported from China.

“Local manufacturing requires huge investments, not just in terms of money, but also manpower and bandwidth. We have to find the right partners, State governments, hire people, import machinery, etc. The way we will do it is — we’ll start with the import route, and test the waters. If the category is big enough and scalable, we’ll set up manufacturing lines,” Jain said. He said the company is already the largest seller of power banks in the country, which may make it viable for them to manufacture those locally.

Localisation

Xiaomi is also planning to get many other products to India, including water purifier and smart TV. However, localisation, it says, is taking time to bring those products to India.

“Our water purifier is a smart water purifier, which means it is connected to the internet. Anytime the filter is about to die, it sends a signal to your phone, from which you can place a replace request. We’ll ship the filter to your place and you can replace it yourself. You don’t need to ever call a technician to your home. I think it will do exceedingly well in India. The reason why we haven’t launched it here is because it doesn’t have a water tank. In India, where there is power and water shortages, you need something that has some sort of a water tank. We are trying to customise it for India.”

For smart TVs, Jain said the company is working with content companies, including Hungama, in which it has made an investment, to have enough content, from which it can make money before launching the TVs in India.

Content library

“We don’t make money from TV hardware. Our TVs cost one-third of what similar Sony or Samsung ones would cost. The way we make money is through content. We have the biggest content library in China. We would want to build a big content library in India before we launch TVs, which we are working on right now.”

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