Intex, Tata Institute to offer course in mobile manufacturing

Students looking for a career in mobile manufacturing will now be able to do scan now apply for a free bachelors course developed by Tata Institute of Social Science and sponsored by Intex Technologies.

In a bid to expand its manufacturing capabilities in the country, mobile phone maker Intex Technologies is launching an apprenticeship programme starting August 22 that will enrol 200 high school students for a three-year programme in mobile manufacturing. By next year, there will be another 600 students enrolled into the next batch.

“Local mobile manufacturing is currently limited to mostly assembly of parts. We want to increase our value addition in the process by developing more components in India. For that we need a lot of skilled professionals who are currently not available. This apprenticeship programme will help in getting trained manpower, which can work in the high-precision atmosphere,” Rajeev Jain, CFO at Intex Technologies, told BusinessLine .

Intex, which is planning an IPO of over ₹700 crore by this year-end, is taking several such measures to improve its production quality to compete with larger peers such as Micromax and Samsung in the Indian market.

“We have also started a rigorous retraining programme for our existing workers to improve our production quality. We are in the process to set up an Integrated Design House for Mobile Handsets in collaboration with a reputed Chinese design house,” Jain said.

Intex, which started out as a computer accessory company in 1996, has seen its revenue grow over 70 per cent in the last one year to ₹6,231 crore from ₹3,652 crore in 2014-15. This was possible with Intex’s push into tier-2 and tier-3 cities as well as with the help of its marketing initiatives such as acquiring the Rajkot IPL franchise, Gujarat Lions for 2 years.

Intex shipments grew a massive 45 per cent annually in Q1 2016 thanks to expanding distribution, marketing and strength in tier-2 and tier-3 towns, according to Counterpoint market research.

“Smartphone shipment for the company grew at 24 per cent annually with strong demand sub-$75 smartphone price band which is the key reason for its growth. However, the vendor needs to scale portfolio and drive volumes in mid smartphone segment to capture the growing number of upgrades,” a Counterpoint research note said.

While Intex’ growth in the last few years has been driven by a CAGR growth of 127 per cent in the mobile business from 2013 to 2016, the influx of Chinese handset makers is creating significant pressure for the company as they are able to offer high-end specification phones at extremely low prices. Thus, Intex is now hedging the risks by expanding into newer areas.

“We are conscious of what’s happening in the market. Temporarily there will be some impact, but we will be able to cope up with the market. Chinese cannot sustain cash burn for too long. They don’t spend too much on marketing because every company has government investments,” Jain said.

The Noida-based company’s bet on its consumer durable business can be seen by its plans to enter 11 new categories in the next one year itself.

“Consumer durable industry is very large and we are still very small in that space. So far we had only semi-automatic machines. We are now launching fully automatic washing machines, air purifier, cash counting machines, refrigerators, ACs etc,” Jain said.

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