Domestic handset manufacturer Karbonn Mobiles on Wednesday said it had earmarked Rs 800 crore for investment in manufacturing over the next three years.

“As part of the investment initiative, we have tied up with Water World to set up a facility in Noida that will be capable of producing 1.5 million units,” Shashin Devasare, promoter of Karbonn Mobiles, said.

“We are also looking at setting up a handset facility in Hyderabad worth Rs.450 crore,” said Devasare.

Karbonn, which is a joint venture between Jaina Marketing and UTL group, closed the last financial year with a profit of Rs.4,000 crore and is looking to close the current financial year at Rs.5,000 crore.

“More than 50 percent of our revenue came from smartphones,” he said.

When asked about competition and the future strategy to survive the churn in the market, Devasare said Karbonn looks at profitable growth rather than following the rat race.

The company’s strategy seems to be capitalising on the rural and the semi-urban market. It is also planning to tap the language barrier issue in India to its use.

“More than 47 percent of consumption of information over the Internet is happening in local languages in India. We are in talks with local content aggregators to bring more content onto our phones and this will drive growth for us,” Devasare said.

He also confirmed that Karbonn would keep doors open for other brands to use the new manufacturing hubs.

The handset-maker has a tie up with Panasonic which is also building its manufacturing unit and had earlier told IANS that Karbonn might produce phones in their facility.

Karbonn launched its new flagship smartphone on Wednesday priced at Rs.5,999.

The Titanium Mach Five smartphone comes with a quad-core processor, 2 GB RAM, 8 megapixel front camera and 5 megapixel front camera.

The device, which runs on Android Lollipop and draws power from a 2,200 mAH battery, will not support LTE.

Image Caption: Shashin Devsare, executive director of Karbonn with Sumodh George Zacharia, category head – Mobile, Tablets & Accessories, Amazon India at the launch of Mach Five mobile by Karbonn

IANS