Optiemus to open 3rd factory

“We are looking at a rapid capacity expansion as the market is also growing at a very rapid pace. Next year, we are also planning to set up manufacturing in South India,” said Gupta in an interview.

India’s smartwatch market grew fourfold from a year earlier in the June quarter, while TWS shipments grew two and a half times, according to Counterpoint Research.

Optiemus currently manufactures wearables for homegrown brands such as Noise and Samsung unit Harman. According to Counterpoint, Noise was the second-highest selling smartwatch brand in India and fifth globally in the June quarter.

The new facility will boost Optiemus’ manufacturing capacity by 2 million units per month. The company currently has two factories for wearables, also in Noida, with a combined capacity of 3.2 million units per month.

The expansion will also double the workforce for Optiemus. “The wearables segment is quite labour intensive. We currently employ 2,500 workers. We expect the headcount to grow to 5,000 with the expansion we have planned,” said Gupta.

That said, most smartphone and wearables manufacturers in India are still not doing full manufacturing and are assembling products from semi-knocked down (SKDs) kits that are imported from China, Taiwan, and other regions. Though Gupta noted that most components are currently being imported as their local assembly requires heavy capital investment, he added that the company is working on cutting dependence on imports for some components.

“Our target is to enable assembly of high-value components in the bill of material (BOM), which are possible in India. We are targeting batteries, displays, and microphones. We will start PCB assembly early next year as the infrastructure and capability is already in place,” said Gupta.