Parts makers’ plants to come on stream post polls: Xiaomi

NEW DELHI: Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which is deepening its local manufacturing footprint, has said that while new plants being set up by two of its component partners “have already made significant progress,” there has been some delay due to the ongoing general elections.

Xiaomi India MD Manu Jain told ET, “The announcement got delayed because of the current election season. Once that’s done, maybe a few months from now, they should be able to announce (the new factories).”

Backing its smartphones sales growth is its internet business, said Jain, which will be driven by services such as payments and content services. “We believe our internet business is going to be big. We believe just the payments or financial services could be billions of dollars of opportunity in India. (Just) look at the size of the UPI transactions.”