India would be a sourcing hub for Haier India

CHENNAI: Home appliances major Haier India Pvt Ltd has plans to set up a colour TV assembling unit near Delhi over 2-3 years as part of its strategy to make India a sourcing hub for South East Asian, West Asian and African markets.
The company is also planning to establish an R&D facility in North India early next fiscal by investing 2-3 million US dollar, T K Banerjee, president and CEO of Haier India told reporters, after launching its range of colour TVs, DVDs and home theatres here on Saturday.
He said the company was looking at a capacity of one million units for the proposed colour TV assembling unit and the investment would be in the range of USD 4-6 million."We hope to start working on the project in the second half of next fiscal," he said.
The assembling unit would also cater to the domestic market. "We plan to sell five lakh colour TVs in India in 2005-06 fiscal. Setting up our own assembling unit makes sense," he said. Haier India has also fixed a target to sell 7.5 lakh CTVs in 2006-07.
The investments for the R&D unit, which is expected to be established in the first quarter of next fiscal, will be scaled up to 4-5 million dollar in 2-3 years time. "In the initial years, we expect back-up support from our parent company," he said.
Haier India, which is the 100 per cent subsidiary of Haier Group with a a turnover of $9.2 billion, currently imports the high-end products from its manufacturing plants in China for the Indian markets.
It is also planning to launch cellphone handsets in India by early December
"We are testing 80 models in different regions in India. We will launch the handsets in India by November-end or early-December," he told reporters here.
After deciding on the handset models to be introduced in India, the company will give the "green signal" for manufacturing the handsets at its units in China, Banerjee said.
To begin with, Haier India will introduce handsets for GSM service. In the next stage, Haier India plans to launch the handsets for the CDMA services, he said.