BANGALORE: India's emerging success as a big market for consumer electronics and hardware products, has spurred the $15.9-billion Singapore-based Flextronics — the world’s largest contract manufacturer — to go full steam ahead on manufacturing and product design in India

To boot, Flextronics is setting up a manufacturing plant in Chennai, ramping up its Pondicherry unit and transforming its Bangalore facility into a major design hub.

That it is focusing only on manufacturing is borne out by the fact that it has sold its software services business to private equity firm KKR and its BPO unit to Raman Roy-led Quattro. Speaking to ET, Flextronics’ director of India operations, Mr A Gururaj said the Chennai plant — spread over 250 acres in a SEZ — will be operational by August next.

“We are going to hire between 1,500 and 2000 people by the year end. This includes both direct labour and engineers,” he pointedout .The company plans to invest $70-100 million in the Chennai plant for the first five years. It expects to get annual revenue of $200 million from the plant.   The company is now searching for targets in the health care, light engineering, media, energy and financial services industries, he said.

The Singapore giant’s move towards manufacturing is backed by a philosophy and strong numbers too: get as close to the customer as possible.

And the numbers back this: the global market for electronics products is set to rise from $763 billion in 2004 to $1.04 trillion in 2009. However, Indian consumption is set to zoom at a faster clip from $11.5 billion in 2004 to $40 billion in 2010.

“We have good confirmed orders and are going to make cellphones, set-top boxes, base stations , computers and digital multimedia products.

Right now, we have enough business to just cater to the Indian market. Addressing global markets out of India will happen in the next phase,” he said.

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