Nokia paces up manufacturing in India due to 5G rollout
Telecom Nokia is set to boost its manufacturing capacity in India by 1.5 times over the next few years. The move has come to support the 5G services roll-out in the country, said Tarun Chhabra, the company’s country head of mobile networks business, to the Business Standard.
Moreover, Nokia is supplying network equipment to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio for their 5G networks from its plant in situated Chennai. However, Vodafone Idea has still not taken a call on their contract as it wants its funding beforehand, as quoted by the Business Standard.
“We have been preparing ourselves for 5G deployment in India for more than a year — whether it is upskilling our people, increasing production, or hiring the right talent. With a huge demand for equipment coming up from India, we will need to ramp up manufacturing to meet this requirement. We could be looking at an enhanced production capacity of 1.5x in the next few years,” Chhabra said on the platform of India Mobile Congress.
“We have invested over Rs 600 crore to manufacture telecom products worth Rs 3,500 crore annually, with over 50 per cent for export,” added the head.
Furthermore, the Chennai plant has already started ramping up the manufacturing facility to hold up more production from the first quarter of CY23 and it aims to gradually increase it to 1.5 times of the current level, based on what the market demands.