Pine Mobiles to invest Rs 500 cr

Pine Mobiles, a Singapore-based mobile handset manufacturer, is planning to invest Rs 500 crore in India in a phased manner as part of its expansion plan here.

The company launched its India operations two months ago, with 250 distributors and 310 service centres. It is planning to reach 400 distributors by this year-end and have 450 service centres by November 2010. “Our target is to sell 100,000 handsets in India by this Diwali,” Rohit Aggarwal, chief executive officer, Pine Mobiles, told Business Standard.

Among others, the company would set up a manufacturing unit in Assam. It currently imports handsets from China. “Every year 14 million phones are sold in India, of which the Indianised products market has a 40-50 per cent share. W are aiming to be the No 5 player in the mobile market by mid-2011 with our exclusive 100 per cent Indianised products having features like Hindu and Muslim calenders in the phone,” he said.

The company would launch handsets in five models — King, Executive, A1, Bee, and Trio — in India. Aggarwal said the models would be available in the price range of Rs 1,100 to Rs 5,000. It is also looking at having a distributor in each district, and would also introduce a bigger battery that would last for 30 days at one charge.

“We plan to make our handsets available in 25,000 outlets by the end of this fiscal as part of our expansion plan in India,” he said. Pine has an R&D unit at Singapore and is planning to set up another in India at Noida by December 2010.