Micromax Bullish About Return To Smartphone Market; Pushes Make In India And Atmanirbhar Bharat

As India moves towards a more self-reliant economy as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, global smartphone brands are pushing more towards local manufacturing, in order to keep up with the market demand and avail benefits that the Indian government has announced with schemes like PLI. While global companies are trying their best to minimise imports, Indian brands have seen an opportunity to take back the market dominated by Chinese and American players currently. Among those brands is Micromax. Yes, the former No.1 smartphone brand is using the Atmanirbhar Bharat push to make a re-entry in the Indian mobile phone market.

Micromax, on its official Twitter handle announced that the company is making a comeback with its new, locally manufactured ‘In’ smartphones. “We’re #INforIndia with #INMobiles! What about you?” Micromax said in the post. The company shared a video of Micromax founder Rahul Sharma, who announced the company’s comeback in order to reduce reliance on Chinese products. In the video, Sharma talked about Micromax’s journey and how it failed to keep up with its Chinese counterparts. Towards the end, Sharma flashes a sky blue box with just a big ‘In’ logo on top of it, believed to be the new smartphone range the company will launch under its “In” branding.

Details of the ‘In’ smartphones are not known yet. A report in MoneyControl says that Micromax has also confirmed to invest Rs. 500 crores on expanding its local manufacturing and research and development operations owing to its comeback in the Indian mobile phone market. Further, the report quoted Sharma as saying that the government’s new PLI scheme balances out foreign and Indian players. He said that a 6 percent support is big and with the support of the government, the company will be able to beat Chinese rivals easily.

The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme was announced by the government of India in April this year. The scheme aims to incentivise the companies that manufacture their products locally. The government has also raised import duties on smartphone components like displays, making it tough for foreign manufacturers to keep their prices in check, and further motivating them to manufacture locally.

Read all the Latest News and Breaking News here