Optiemus to onboard 2,000 in 2 years, raise production capacity

Electronics manufacturing services firm Optiemus Electronics is planning to expand its production capacity and aims to increase its headcount by around 2,000 people in next two years, a senior company official said.

The company's existing production capacity is likely to be exhausted within two years and it has started looking for locations to set-up a new manufacturing unit, Optiemus Electronics Limited (OEL) managing director A Gururaj told PTI.

"We will have to wait and see how much volume our customers will look at, but I do believe that over the next one to one-and-a-half years, at least a couple of thousand people will be added on the shop floor, if not more," Gururaj said.

At present, the company has a team of 300 people.

OEL is among the electronic manufacturing services firms that have qualified for production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes for mobile phones, IT hardware and telecom products.

The government is giving incentives to companies under the PLI scheme based on the investments they make and incremental sales on a year-on-year basis.

"On the revenue commitment, I think for the first year we are depending on the supply chain situation, we will wait and see how it comes out. We may not fall very short; I think we'll come close to meeting our targets.

"Over one-and-a-half years from now, I think we are very sure that we will meet our targets given that there is a lot of interest from customers to work with OEL Wistron," Gururaj said.

The company has signed an agreement with its old joint venture partner and Apple's contract partner Wistron to jointly work on boosting production of mobile devices, IT hardware, telecom equipment etc.

In August, OEL said it will invest Rs 1,350 crore in manufacturing of mobile phones and telecom gear with an aim to generate revenue of Rs 38,000 crore in the next 3-5 years from electronics manufacturing services (EMS) and create 11,000 jobs.

Gururaj said that the very reason to sign up with Wistron was to create world class facilities out of India, and world class facilities come with world class people.

"We are doing a lot of hand picking of people when we hire the people and that is our biggest focus right now to get the right manpower with the right experience. Given that the product portfolio will be wide, mobile phones, laptops, servers, wearables etc, it's a wide space of working," he said.

He said that the company has started looking for locations to set-up a new factory as present capacity is expected to be exhausted within two years.

"It takes time getting the land, building approvals etc to get moving. We have seen aggressive traction, in terms of pipeline, we believe that the present infrastructure will last us about two years, after which we have already started work on looking at expanding our facilities thereafter," Gururaj said.

OEL has two manufacturing plants in Noida, Uttar Pradesh with a total combined manufacturing capacity of 20 lakh devices per month.