Celkon to invest Rs.100 cr in R&D, design

Until it set up assembling facilities in Medchal, near Hyderabad, recently, Celkon Mobiles was a heavily import-dependent company relying on China.

July 30, 2015 03:32 pm | Updated 03:32 pm IST - Hyderabad:

Celkon Mobiles is planning to establish an R&D and design house with an investment of around Rs.100 crore and employ 500 people on the facility. The choice of location is either Hyderabad or Bengaluru.

For the consumers, the move is expected to deliver cost benefit of around 12-15 per cent. "We will be initiating discussion with our Chinese partner as well as with the governments", Chairman and Managing Director Y. Guru said on Thursday.

Until it set up assembling facilities in Medchal, near Hyderabad, recently, Celkon Mobiles was a heavily import-dependent company relying on China. "We do the R&D and design of our phones in China employing 130 people", Mr. Guru said, hinting that it could ultimately decide on Hyderabad.

Noida in Uttar Pradesh and near Delhi, which hosts several mobile and related units, is out of question."Everyone says lets go to Bengaluru, I ask them why not Hyderabad," he said.

On the Medchal plant, he said that the production was being ramped up to achieve 3 lakh units a year by 2016, which is 50 per cent of total sales. The company, he added, had recently graduated to making smart phones priced at Rs.3000 at the plant. Hitherto only feature phones were being made there.

Celkon, he replied to a query, sold feature phones priced at Rs.800 onwards and smart phones in the Rs.3000 and Rs.10,000 band. Mr. Guru was briefing presspersons at the launch of Celkon's new phones - Millennia 2GB Xpress and Millennia Xplore.

The dual SIM Kitkat (upgradable to Lollipop) 2GB Xpress comes with 2GB RAM, 16 GB ROM, 1.2Ghz Core Processor, 5MP rear camera and priced Rs.6,222.

Millennia Xplore is priced at around Rs.7,000 and boasts of Android Lollipop 5.0, 8GB ROM and 1GB RAM. On the cards from Celkon stable is 5K Transformer.

The mobile, which is likely to be launched within a fortnight, is named after the 5000 mAh battery from which another mobile can be charged. It will have 5 inch screen and priced around Rs.6000, Mr.Guru said.

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