Former Wistron top executive joins local elec contract manufacturer Optiemus

NEW DELHI: Ayekawad Narayanamurthy Gururaj, instrumental in kickstarting Apple’s phone production in India while working with Taiwanese manufacturer Wistron, has joined local maker Optiemus Infracom, which is among the companies that has won the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile phone manufacturing.


Gururaj is the former MD of Wistron India and will now spearhead the business of Optiemus Electronics, a subsidiary of Optiemus Infracom.

Optiemus was among the 16 companies that had been chosen by the government late last year for its ambitious Rs 41,000 crore PLI scheme that aims to make India a hub for mobile manufacturing.

The others included four top manufacturing suppliers of Apple (Foxconn Hon Hai, Rising Star, Wistron and Pegatron), Korean Samsung and domestic makers Lava, Bhagwati (Micromax), Padget Electronics (unit of Dixon), and UTL Neolyncs.

"As we envision participating aggressively in India's electronics manufacturing growth story, we believe that Gururaj is the right leader to guide the group to success,'' Optiemus Infracom chairman Ashok Kumar Gupta said.

Gururaj was managing director at Wistron India between 2016 and 2019 when Apple started assembling iPhones in India. He was also instrumental in setting up the greenfield manufacturing operations for Flextronics at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai.

"We look forward to playing a major role in telecommunications and IT hardware manufacturing in India, and we are confident that Gururaj's able leadership and years of experience will immensely boost our team's capabilities to deliver our objectives," Gupta said.

Optiemus has previously manufactured devices for top phone sellers such as Oppo, OnePlus, LG,

HTC

, Blackberry, and Reliance Jio, through its manufacturing unit in Noida.

"I am excited to be part of Optiemus's journey at a point when initiatives like PLI have potential to emerge as significant milestones in shaping the future of the Indian electronics manufacturing industry," Gururaj said.