Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lay stone of mobile hub in Tirupati

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of country's first mobile manufacturing electronics cluster in Tirupati tomorrow.

"The Prime Minister will lay foundation to set up a dedicated mobile handset manufacturing facility in Tirupati tomorrow. This will be another important milestone to leverage the Andhra Pradesh's ability to attract further investments," Indian Cellular Association (ICA) President Pankaj Mohindroo said in a statement.

A number of Indian mobile vendors like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn and Celkon will set up their campuses at the 122-acre electronics manufacturing hub.

Celkon will get 20 acres, Micromax 15 acres, Karbonn 15.28 acres and Lava 20 acres in this Hub. All the 4 companies together are targeted to produce more than 7 crore mobile handsets per annum, the statement said.

Celkon in a release said that manufacturing companies have agreed to invest a total of over Rs 2,000 crore and the cluster will create over 45,000 direct and indirect jobs.

"Celkon will hire 80 per cent people with 10th and higher secondary passed students for assembly lines," Celkon Chairman MD Guru said.

The company has set target to start production of mobile phones at this cluster within next six months. "We will hire 60 per cent women for assembling lines to empower rural women," Guru said.

Mohindroo said that the Hub at Tirupati will create more than 10,000 jobs within a year and expects this hub to contribute at least 5 per cent of all-India target of 15 lakh jobs by the year 2019 from mobile manufacturing activities.

Foxconn has already started operations in Andhra Pradesh for manufacturing brands like Xiaomi, Gionee etc.