Chinese handset maker iVOOMi is targeting to bring its first 5G device by mid-2019, as told by Ashwin Bhandari, CEO, iVOOMi India.
The company has shipped close to a million devices in the 7 months of its operations in India and has plans of investing $22-25 million in 2018 for boosting manufacturing, research and development.
According to ETTelecom, Bhandari said, “For our R&D set up, product testing will be the first layer, second layer would be product designing and third layer would be the focussed R&D. For these we will be increasing the investment in different phases”.
Also, the device maker is planning to shift from SKD manufacturing format to the CKD format and will be completely manufacturing all its PCBs in India this year.
“It will take 3-4 months from now to make the shift and get into mass production, we’re in the trial phase wherein 100-500 units are being manufactured and tested. Once we get the approval from quality and the production process team, then we’ll be shifting the PCB manufacturing in the Indian market,” said Bhandari.
The company which had tied up with Hi-Pad technology for local manufacturing will be focused on its single partner wherein it will also expand the manufacturing facility. Currently its manufacturing capacity is 300000 smartphones a month and 200000 power banks a month.
iVOOMi will further be introducing new product lines starting with smart accessories in March. The company’s building an activity health tracker which will be its first product. Its second product will be smart bluetooth headphones/speakers which would work automatically as per one’s mood and would help one to navigate, schedule.
The company’s long-term vision includes plans of expanding in terms of designing and manufacturing its entire product in India and has a goal of developing an export-centric area for which it sees 2020 as the timeline.
“Our first step is increasing the volume, second is increasing the product line, post this we’ll start with design and team development on the R&D front. We’re planning to kick off the export initiatives in 2019 which will push the product from India to the different parts of our client base,” added Bhandari.
The Chinese device-maker has been an online focussed brand so far but it will also be foraying into the offline segment post June for which it has created multiple entrepreneur partners within the Indian structure who will be working closely with the brand and will deliver the product to the outlets.
“The offline strategy has been chalked out, we’ll kick off the partnership part in the month of March or April and the product will be made available in the offline market post June,” told Bhandari.
iVOOMi has launched its second series of flagship smartphones – i1 and i1s which will be available on Flipkart through a flash sale on January 10.
