NEW DELHI: Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi on Tuesday announced a new manufacturing unit in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The 1 million square feet facility, set up in partnership with electronics manufacturing company Flex, will be Xiaomi’s seventh plant in India.
With the start of operations of the new plant, Xiaomi’s production capacity in the country has increased from two phones per second to three phones. Manu Kumar Jain, managing director, Xiaomi India, said that 95 per cent of Xiaomi’s phones are made in India, with 65 per cent of a phone’s value sourced locally. He said that Xiaomi is working towards bridging the 5 per cent gap in local manufacturing and will soon domestically produce 99 per cent of the phones it sells in India.
Xiaomi also officially entered the country’s digital payment ecosystem by launching its UPI-based payment system, Mi-Pay. The company said that it has complied with data localisation requirements, and the app has been approved by the National Payments Council of India (NPCI). Private sector bank ICICI Bank will function as the payment service provider for the Mi-Pay app. Mi-Pay will be available soon via Mi-Apps store.
Users can make payments to other Mi-Pay users or through UPI ID and bank accounts (also through debit card and credit card) as well. Xiaomi also offers QR code option for transactions on Mi-Pay. With the launch, Xiaomi will take on established UPI-based payments apps in India, such as Google Pay and PhonePe.