Indian smartphone manufacturers likely to miss FY24 PLI targets
Indian smartphone manufacturers including Lava and Bhagwati (Micromax) are struggling to meet their incremental targets under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the third year in a row in FY24, underlining challenges in the government's efforts to create local manufacturing champions.
Dixon Technologies is set to be among a few exceptions as it has some big orders and signed some new ones, industry executives said. While global manufacturing companies such as Foxconn, Wistron and Samsung have helped the PLI scheme for mobile phones become a grand success, a top executive at homegrown smartphone brand Lava said the manufacturing industry needs more time to establish local champions.
Lava had missed the incremental production targets under the scheme in FY23 but is hopeful to meet the target for FY24 on the back of a resurgence in its brand and increased government procurement of smartphones from local companies, said its cofounder SN Rai.
However, others like Bhagwati Products, the electronics manufacturing unit of Micromax Informatics, and Optiemus Electronics are likely to miss the targets for the current fiscal, too, industry executives said.
Optiemus, in fact, appears to have given up on attracting smartphone orders and is instead focusing on expanding its manufacturing presence in wearables and IT hardware, they said.
Bhagwati has failed to get big orders from Chinese smartphone brands despite a push from the government on account of smaller capacities, low capital expenditure, and a conflict of interest arising from pursuing its own brands, industry executives said.
Bhagwati and Optiemus did not respond to ET's emailed queries as of press time Monday.
In contrast to homegrown players, global
