Karbonn mobiles aims Rs 5,000 crore turnover in current fiscal

The Indian smartphone market maybe barely growing, but Karbonn Mobiles, one of the larger Indian players, claims it aims to touch Rs 5,000 crore revenues in the current fiscal. Sudhir Hasija, Chairman of Karbonn mobiles says: "While it is true that certain categories of the mobile phone market like smartphones are witnessing very low growth, we are confident of increasing our revenues by 20-25 per cent from what we did in the previous year."

Hasija said that the company is focusing on strengthening its manufacturing facilities in India as a part of the 'Make in India' drive. While most of the 'manufacturing' sounds like value-added assembly, he said that things like phone chargers, packaging and printing as well as other components of its offerings were already being completely sourced locally.

"We already have manufacturing operations in Delhi and we expect the Andhra Pradesh facility to fully come online in the next couple of months. We have invested close to Rs 200 crore in the facility, and can manufacture 5 lakh handsets. The current focus is on ensuring that manufacturing is fully ready to meet our requirements," he said.

Karbonn, which already exports to neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal apart from some Middle Eastern countries, now wants to push into Eastern Europe markets. "We feel that there is a market for affordable, good quality smartphones in markets like Romania,  Poland and Hungary. Exports, which currently contribute just about 5 per cent, we intend to increase it to 10 per cent of our topline."