Affordable tablet maker Datawind will foray into low cost smart phone making and has plans to set up three manufacturing units, one of them in Andhra Pradesh. The phones start at Rs.1,999 and come with free internet for 12 months intending to tap the feature phone market that accounts for about 1.4 crore every year in India and convert such users to smart phones.
In keeping with the “Make in India” campaign, Datawind plans to set up three units, one of them in Visakhapatnam or Vijayawada with a space of 50000 sft, Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli told reporters here on Wednesday. Another plant would come up at Amritsar and the third in Central India. The three units together would have a capacity to make 50 lakh phones. The first unit would go on stream in 90 days and the others would follow.
“We are looking at the IT policy of Andhra Pradesh and are quite upbeat about the quality educational facilities and are keen on coming here,” he said.
The three units would be funded by the Rs.165 crore it had raised in an IPO on Toronto Stock Exchange.
The idea was to make internet available to those who could not afford to buy expensive smart phones, Mr. Tuli said pointing out the Chinese businesses were driven by Internet access.
Duty waiver
In a reversal of policy, the budget for the current year had increased duty on finished phones from 6 to 13.5 per cent and for assembling brought it down to zero per cent.
Mr. Tuli estimates that about 15 crore phones would switch to the zero duty category and Datawind aims to capture about 3 per cent of that market.
