Tuned in for expansion, Xone to set up Chennai unit

Xone, manufacturer of the eponymous wire-free headphones that also feature in-built MP3 players and FM tuners, will set up a new facility in Chennai to expand its product offerings.

The plant will come up at the SIPCOT industrial park at Sriperumbudur, where the company would manufacture “a range of music and speaker systems that would plug the gaps in the Indian market,” said Xone’s Managing Director Bharath Subramaniam.

Currently, it imports speakers (from Kenwood) and flashes (Toshiba) and assembles its headphones at a small facility in Chennai.

But now its R&D team has developed a range of products including Bluetooth-enabled music systems, headphones and sound bars, “which, we are sure, will take the Xone brand to the next phase of growth”, Subramaniam said.

Besides, Xone plans to expand its retail horizon. At present, it sells its headphones, priced upwards of ₹4,500 apiece, through its 14 outlets located in various airports across the country.

“In addition to opening stores in other airports in the country, we are now looking to set up shops in leading malls and high streets,” he said.

For (music) content, the company has tied up with Indian Music Industry and other independent music companies such as Saregama and Tips.

“We now have over half a million tracks across genres, and the number is growing.”

It has procured the rights to download these songs to its headphones.

Though Xone does not charge its customers for the music at present, it proposes to set up kiosks to digitally download these tracks to anyone for a ‘nominal fee’ in future.

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