Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which also boasts of being the No. 1 in sales, is willing to bring all its suppliers into India as part of its manufacturing plans in the country.

Sources closed to the developments told BusinessLine that Manu Kumar Jain, Global Vice-President and Managing Director, Xiaomi India, met senior ministers and requested for support from the government so that it can bring more vendors into India.

“The company wants supporting hand from the government so that all of its ancillaries from China can come to India so that complete manufacturing can be done here. It approached the government saying India is a right place for investments right now,” a senior government official said, adding that this would also mean more employability in future.

Jain had met Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu, NITI Aayog CEO, Amitabh Kant and Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Ramesh Abhishek last week, to discuss and what the company wants to do in India.

Jain also shared pictures on Twitter and one of his tweets said, “We discussed about @XiaomiIndia's future #MakeInIndia plans, and how we are trying to boost local manufacturing!”

When asked for an official comment for this article, Jain and his team declined to comment further.

Sources from the company said the meetings were fruitful and the government also wanted to know the views of Chinese vendors for investment in India. The entire mobile industry is looking up to India and they want to understand what are the incentives or policies in place for them, said the person.

Meanwhile, another official from the government said the government was also keen to know if Chinese vendors are interested to invest in India and what are their views for participating in ‘Make in India’ programme and to that, an even will also be soon organised.

“Commerce Ministry will be organising an event in a month or so to discuss all the possibilities, wherein Chinese vendors will be invited for dialogues,” he said, adding that the government’s whole idea of raising basic custom duty on smartphones to 20 per cent, from 15 per cent in the Budget, was to encourage manufacturing in India.

That is the reason companies like Foxconn have started to assemble assembles printed circuit boards (PCBs) in India. Samsung is the only company till now which was assembling PCBs in India.

According to analysts, Xiaomi may also start with the PCBs in India and can be through Foxconn only to start with right now.

Xiaomi has three manufacturing plants in India -- two for phones in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and one for power banks in Noida – through its third party vendors such as Foxconn and Hipad Technology. The company has 400 direct employees and more than 10,000 workers right now.

comment COMMENT NOW