Lava has resumed production at its mobile phone manufacturing facility in Noida, India. The company has started operating with 20 percent of its production capacity. 600 out of its 3500 workforce have resumed work.
“Though, we might face some challenge due to the delayed availability of manpower and materials, we have sufficient inventory to maintain the pace of our production for the initial period,” Sanjeev Agarwal, chief manufacturing officer of Lava, said in a statement on Saturday.

Lava is expecting that its components partners will open their factories soon. Lava has accelerated its efforts towards the localization of components to reduce its dependency on other countries.

The company has arranged special buses for the transportation of its employees. Lava is also encouraging its employees to practice basic hygiene and social distancing both inside and outside the company’s premises.

Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo have also received approval to resume manufacturing and assembling of devices.

Samsung has begun manufacturing operations at its Noida factory and plans to gradually increase its workforce to 3,000, the 30 percent workforce requirement as per the guidelines, according to media reports.

Vivo and Oppo will also resume production at their respective Noida factories with 30 percent of their capacity.

India’s smartphone market rose 1.5 percent to 32.5 million units in the first quarter of 2020. Smartphone market China and USA markets declined by 20.3 percent and 16 percent, respectively in Q1 2020.

Inventories remained high throughout the distribution channels due to seasonally low demand in the first quarter, clubbed with the COVID-19 impact from mid-March 2020 onwards as the nationwide lockdown was announced, IDC said.