Flex adds new domestic area to address market demand

Company splits its SEZ complex and adds DTA area to cater to domestic market

Electronics major Flex, earlier know as Flextronics, which has been focusing mainly on exports from its facility at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai is now planning to go "aggressive" on domestic market. The company got Domestic Tariff Area (DTA) license a year back post which it had split the SEZ complex into two units, one for SEZ and another for DTA.

The company has total built up area of around 645,000 sq.ft, which will house 250,000 sq.ft of DTA. Flex said the move comes in the backdrop of increasing demand or interest from its global customers to cater the Indian market, while demand from the domestic customers, in India, is also increasing.

The DTA facilities will manufacture products for company's global and domestic customers.

Meanwhile the company is also planning to manufacture more new products for sectors like automotive, energy and telecom including for 4G at the Chennai facility, which started manufacturing products for Lenovo and Motorala.

The company also wants to manufacture wearable products at its Chennai facility.

Sekaran Letchumanan, Head of Flex Chennai Industrial Park (CIP), said that the company employees around 10,000 people in India, including around 4,000 at its factory, around 5,000 at its global business service units at Chennai and Pune and around 1,000 in logistics. The company is planning to increase this to around 13,000-14,000.

At factory alone the company plans to add around 3,000 people as the company is expanding its DTA area.

Valerie Kurniawan, Head of Marketing & Communications (Asia) said that the DTA area will be catering to Flex's global customers who want to launch and expand products in India and also the company's domestic customers.

The company, which has operations in India for the last 10 years, manufactures a range of products including communication devices (smart phone, set up boxes and modems), telecom equipment, computing (servers), LED Lighting, industrial products.

Cumulatively, the facility has produced 250 million phone chargers and power adapters, 1.5 million modems, around 400,000 photo receptors, 50,000 base stations and three million mobile phones in this facility. Recently the company started manufacturing products for Lenovo and Motorala brands.

Letchumanan said at present the capacity utilisation of DTA is around 40 per cent and in the next 12-18 months the company hopes to increase it to 100 per cent.

"For us three important growth countries China, Malaysia and India which are getting log of corporate attention. India is very critical for us," said Kurniawan while refusing to comment on money invested by Flex in India.