Bangalore: Dell Inc, the world's largest maker of personal computers, said on Friday it would set up manufacturing operations in India in the first half of 2007.
The company will invest $30 million over five years in the plant, which would be set up in Sriperumbudur, on the outskirts of Chennai, an official at its Indian unit said.
"We will start with a production capacity of 400,000 units and quickly ramp up to much higher numbers," Rajan Anandan, Dell India's vice-president and general manager, said.
The manufacturing plant, which will be sixth for Dell globally, will employ 1,100 people, he said. It has two manufacturing sites in China and one in Malaysia in the region, where demand for computer hardware is soaring due to relatively lower penetration rates compared with western markets.
Dell, which competes with IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co and local firms HCL Infosystems Ltd and Wipro Ltd, said the new facility would help it raise its share in the Indian market from 7 per cent.
The company's revenue in India rose 63 per cent in April-June to about $100 million from the same quarter last year, he said. "We are building this factory with the simple objective of accelerating our growth in India.
We will start with manufacturing desktop products and over a period of time we will expand our product line," he said. Dell already employs 12,000 people in India across its three business segments – call centre operations, research and development activities, and computer and server sales business.
The company said in March it planned to increase its staff in India to 20,000 over the next three years to tap opportunities in Asia's fourth-largest economy that is a growing market for desktops and laptops. Sales of desktop computers in India grew 27 per cent in the year to March 2006 to over 4.6 million units and it is forecast to surpass 5.6 million units in 2006/07.
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