By IANS,
Sugandha (Hooghly) : Xenitis Telecommunication, a newly floated venture of West Bengal-based conglomerate Xenitis Group, plans to invest Rs.2.5 billion for setting up a mobile handset manufacturing facility in West Bengal.
“We will set up a mobile handset manufacturing unit with an investment of Rs.2.5 billion in West Bengal. We have already bought 10 acres of land, adjacent to our existing unit in Hooghly district, for the project,” Xenitis Group chairman and managing director Santanu Ghosh Tuesday told reporters during the launch of its lowest-priced mobile handsets at Rs.499.
He said: “The mobile handsets, priced between Rs. 499-Rs.2,000, are targeted to penetrate the rural areas of West Bengal. These affordable handsets would be available in the market from August this year. It would be the first mobile handsets manufacturing unit in eastern India.”
He said the company is into the business of computer components manufacturing and supply, but soon it will start developing hard disc and central processing unit (CPU) for computers.
This year the Xenitis Group posted a turnover of Rs.10 billion and Xenitis Infotech, the flagship company of the group, contributed Rs.8.6 billion and Global Automobiles, the two-wheeler manufacturing wing, registered a turnover of about Rs.1.5 billion.
“We are targeting to double the group turnover in 2008-09,” said Ghosh.
“We have already booked an order for manufacturing 160,000 mobile handsets per month, of which about 50,000 would be exported to Dubai and the Middle East,” he said. The number of mobile users in India is projected to increase to 500 million by 2010, he added.
He said: “We would invest Rs.2.2 billion in Xenitis Infotech for its capacity expansion and Rs.1.1 billion in company’s automobile manufacturing business in the current financial year.”
A 20-member team from West Bengal state assembly’s standing committee on commerce and industries Tuesday visited the factory site of Xenitis Group in Hooghly district to monitor the progress of its ventures.