Mobile handsets and consumer durables manufacturer Intex Technologies plans to invest ₹500 crore in setting up a smartphone manufacturing plant in the country. The company is in talks with three State Governments — Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand — to finalise the location for the plant.

The proposed plant will be used for manufacturing mobile phones initially and later other electronic goods.

“We are in talks with these State Governments and had a meeting last week for setting up a manufacturing plant. We already have three manufacturing plants in Jammu and Himachal Pradesh for feature phone and other computer peripherals. The idea is to manufacture smartphones in the new plant,” Keshav Bansal, Director, Marketing, Intex Technologies, told BusinessLine here.

Speaking on the sidelines of a new smartphone launch, he said the final decision on the location of the new facility will depend on the incentives given by the respective State Governments.

“The Government has been talking a lot on electronics manufacturing in India, but it has not started implementing the policies yet on a larger scale. Once the Government start implementing the policies, we would also look at manufacturing light-emitting diode (LED) televisions as part of our expansion plans,” he said.

The company is already manufacturing products such as mobile batteries, chargers, phone panel covers and speakers in the existing plants.

“We have our research and development centres in Delhi and Jammu in India, and one in China, which has started work on designing for future products. Therefore, we are just waiting for a proper ecosystem to emerge here,” he added.

On exports of its products, Bansal said the company sells its products in 70 countries and the mobile handsets are also going to be exported to many countries in future. Currently, it is exporting its mobile phones to only 15 countries, including Russia, West Asia, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Turnover target The company that generated more than ₹2,000 crore as turnover last year, expects a turnover of ₹3,500 crore this year and is on track to achieve ₹6,000 crore ($1 billion by 2015-16) turnover, he added.

Meanwhile, the company launched a new smartphone ‘Cloud FX’ priced at ₹1,999. Based on Firefox operating system, this is one of the lowest priced smartphone available in the country.

It will be exclusively available through Snapdeal and the company aims to sell around five-lakh units over the next three months.

With a 2MP rear camera, it has features such as bluetooth, Wi-Fi, dual Sim and comes with 128MB RAM, 256MB memory that is expandable up to 4GB and a 1,250 mAh battery.

The company also said it will focus around launching sub-₹10,000 handsets for both domestic and export markets for at least next one year.

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