Nokia phone maker HMD to use part of its freshly-raised $230 million on Indian operations

NEW DELHI: HMD Global, the maker of Nokia-branded phones, is looking to make India its future export hub, and will be using a large part of the $230 million it has just raised from investors like Nokia Technologies, Google, and Qualcomm for the purpose, a top executive has said.

HMD will work with local contract manufacturers, chipset designer Qualcomm, and internet giant Google to bring low-cost 4G and affordable 5G smartphones in the coming future, Florian Seiche, CEO at HMD Global, told ET exclusively. Google and Qualcomm had announced a similar partnership with Indian telecom operator Reliance Jio last month.

“We are planning to also partner with big operators and telcos as well in addition to the internet players or the online players that we are already partnering with,” Seiche said. “I definitely see there's a great opportunity in making deeper partnerships also with operators and other channel partners in India.”