Producing in China 3 times as costly as India: Lava CMD

New Delhi: Home grown mobile phone company Lava International plans to invest Rs 250 crore by 2021 to design devices in the country and generate capacity of making 1.2 crore handsets per month.

Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha, Law and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad along with cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni unveiled Lava's first 'design in India' Prime X priced at Rs 1,499. The handset will go on sale from Wednesday.

"Design in India is next step of Make in India. Design in India will also be able to leverage software power of India because 60 per cent of design component is of software. Lava's Design In India reminds of initial days of IT industry movement in the country," Sinha said at the event.

While speaking at launch of first design in India mobile phone, Prasad said,

" India is going to surpass China soon by becoming biggest economy of the world." Prasad further added that Lava's design in India move should be seen as completion of a cycle in this context.

Lava International Chairman and Managing Director Hari Om Rai said that the company plans to invest Rs 250 crore by 2021 for design in India and will launch first design in India smartphone by October 2018.

"China(economy) has grown 5-6 times compared to that of India but there cost of production is three times higher than us. We are at best stage of taking manufacturing in to our country," Rai said.

Lava International , Head for Products, Gaurav Nigam said Lava aims to have local production capacity of 1.2 crore mobile handsets and stop importing designs from China.

The company established it's design centre in Noida in 2016.

Lava also has in-house research and development centre in Shenzhen, China with workforce of around 700 people.