Vivo to scale smartphone production in India, start export this year

Smartphone maker vivo plans to scale up capacity to 60 million units by the year-end from its current capacity of 50 million units a year from its manufacturing units in India, a top executive said, adding that the company’s plans to begin exports within this year were on track.
“We will start export this calendar year and we remain committed to meet the target. We will be exporting to multiple neighboring countries and some other nations as well,” said Paigham Danish, head of business strategy at vivo India.

He added that the company’s plans to eventually increase manufacturing to 120 million, also announced earlier this year were ongoing. vivo had announced a Rs 7,500 crore plan in 2019 for expanding manufacturing in India over the next few years.
“We remain committed to all these commitments. But increasing manufacturing capacity takes time. Further, identifying markets that we can cater to from India also needs time. On top of that, we are still facing covid-related challenges in some markets. We are in process and I can confirm that we will be realizing our targets and commitments,” Danish said.

Danish said that the smartphone maker will strengthen its position in the top five categories but not venture into the sub Rs 8,000 segment with low-cost devices.

He further stated that its existing 5G devices were fully compatible with non-standalone 5G launched by Airtel and by October end, its 5G phones will be compatible with standalone 5G as well, which is being deployed by Reliance Jio.
“More than 6 vivo devices already support the SA network in the Indian market and all our 5G devices support the NSA network. And by this month's end, the majority of our 5G devices will be SA compatible,” he added.

The company has been under the government scanner for allegedly evading taxes by under-reporting local revenues and showing losses. Danish said that the company’s operations were continuing as before and that it was focusing on enabling the 5G experience on all its models. “We remain committed to providing a seamless user experience to our consumers. Currently, our priority is to make our devices compatible with the Indian 5G network, so that the consumers can utilize the 5G connectivity,” he said.