Xiaomi begins production of smart TVs at Tirupati

Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi has begun production of smart TVs in India. Dixon Technologies will produce LED TVs for Xiaomi at the 32-acre facility here.

Xiomi, which forayed into the TV business six months ago, emerged a market leader in the smart TV segment.

The factory will assemble 1,00,000 Mi LED TVs a month by end of the first quarter of 2019.

The plant will start local assembling with Mi LED Smart TV 4A 32 inches and Mi LED Smart 43 inches to start with, according to Manu Jain, Managing Director of Xiaomi India. He said the company would consider producing more TV models from the Tirupati facility. “We sold five lakh TVs in just six months. We opened 650 service centres,” he said.

Of the 11 million TVs that are sold in the country in a year, smart TVs have a share of 20-22 per cent.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu formally inaugurated the exclusive integrated assembly line for Xiaomi.

Addressing a gathering later, he said the government was targeting to be among the top five destinations in the world in Ease of Doing Business (EoDB). The State ranked No 1 in EoDB in the country.

“The State is targeting to build an ecosystem for electronic hardware manufacturing around Tirupati. Of the expected $400-billion electronic hardware imports in the next few years, we would like to substitute 50 per cent,” he said.

Dixon contract-manufactures for major multinational companies such as Panasonic, Sanyo, Skyworth and TCL at its eight facilities in three States.

Dixon Technologies Executive Chairman Sunil Vachani said the company would ramp up its production capacity at the Tirupati facility.

“We are going to increase the overall LED TV production capacity to 3.5 million units a year, making it the single largest smart TV production facility in the country,” he said.

“The production capacity of CCTVs will go up to 10 million units. We will produce 2 million digital video recorders,” he said.

The company, which announced a plan to invest ₹150 crore at the facility, has so far invested ₹35 crore.