Micromax to invest Rs 300Cr for 3 manufacturing plants in India

Indian smartphone manufacturer Micromax will invest Rs 300 crore in India over the next few months to set up three new manufacturing units, reportsIBNLive. The new plants will be set up in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana, and will be operational by next year.

As of now, Micromax claims that it has allotted 20 acres of land in Telangana and 25 acres in Rajasthan for the manufacturing plants. The construction on both these plants will begin soon, while the location for the Andhra Pradesh will be decided soon. Overall, the company aims to have a capacity of 4 million units once these plants are fully functional. It will invest Rs 100 crore in each plant.

Micromax currently has an assembly unit in Rudrapur which produces around 1 million units, accounting for one third of the company’s requirements, with the rest of the units imported from China. The company had started manufacturing at this plant in April last year, where it also manufactures all the tablets sold in the country. Interestingly, Micromax mentions that by 2017, it will start to manufacture batteries and other components in India.

Manufacturing in India: The Indian government has been encouraging domestic companies to start manufacturing electronics goods within the country instead of importing them and had approved a National Policy on Electronics. Since then, various smartphone manufacturers have said they will start manufacturing in India or have already started doing so.

– Last month, Optiemus Infracom, the founder of the domestic mobile brand Zen Mobile, signed a joint venture with Wistron Corporation to set up a mobile manufacturing unit in Noida.

– Various manufacturers have tied up with Foxconn to manufacture phones in India. Earlier this month, Oppo started contract manufacturing in India in partnership with Foxconn while in September, Gionee tied up with Foxconn and Dixon to manufacture its phones in India. In June, the company started making Xiaomi phones in the country.

– The month before, Foxconn was in talks with Adani Enterprises to form a joint venture (JV), likely to make iPhones in India. The company had first reported in June that it could possibly set up base in India to manufacture iPhones, iPads and iPods for Indian and international sales.

– In August, Lenovo started the local production of smartphones with Flextronics under a contract manufacturing deal at its Sriperumbudur plant.

– Videocon Mobile Phones, Videocon Group’s mobile company, started manufacturing mobile phones in the country.

– In June, homegrown mobile phone maker Celkon opened its first manufacturing unit in the country in Telangana.

– In March, Samsung and Sony had announced plans for setting up manufacturing bases in India as a part of the Make in India initiative.

– Earlier this year, Spice Group said it would invest Rs 500 crores to set up a manufacturing unit in Uttar Pradesh.

India’s Nexus Venture Partners Announces New $450M Fund

Nexus Venture Partners — the top-tier Indian VC firm which counts Snapdeal, Etsy-like Craftsvilla and medtech startup Lybrate in its portfolio — has reloaded for more deals after it announced its newest $450 million fund.

The fund, which is the nine-year-old firm’s fourth to date, takes it to over one billion in capital under management — becoming the first Indian VC to reach that milestone. Nexus, which has invested in more than 60 companies to date, said the capital will be used for seed and early stage deals once again. In particular, the firm is looking closely at retail, financial services, health and education in the consumer space, in addition to promising companies in the enterprise space.

Nexus’ previous fund — its third — closed at $270 million in 2012, but now it has ramped up in line with increased interest and activity in India’s startup space.

“We are thankful to our investors that continue to back us and believe in our investment philosophy,” Naren Gupta, cofounder and managing director of the firm said in a statement. “Most significantly, the Nexus team is fortunate to have exceptional entrepreneurs partner with us on their journey to build market leading companies.”

Other firms to raise new funds this year include Helion Ventures, Accel, and Qualcomm. New York-based Tiger Global, the hedge fund that has been among the most active investors in India, closed $2.5 billion in new capital last week, while Japan’s SoftBank has pledged to spend more than $10 billion on deals with India-based startups.Sequoia, SAIF and Lightbox are among other well-funded and active VC firms in India.

Google Invests More Than $60M in Mobvoi, Its Android Wear Partner In China

Google’s services are not available in China, but that isn’t stopping it from making a significant investment in a company based on Chinese soil. The U.S. search giant is backing Mobvoi, a three-year-old company specializing in mobile voice technology, to the tune of more than $60 million.

The duo already have business ties. Mobvoi is the company that Google picked to bring Android Wear, its operating system for wearables, to China, so this deal takes things up to the next level.

The size investment, which is a Series C round for Mobvoi, has not been disclosed, but Mobvoi’s Yufan Wang confirmed that Google has become a minority shareholder. The deal, she said, takes the company to $75 million in investment to date. Since Mobvoi previously raised $10 million Series B and $1.6 million Series A rounds, Google’s investment is just shy of $65 million.

Beyond the Android Wear deal, the two companies have plenty in common. Beijing-based Mobvoi was started by ex-Googlers — CEO Zhifei Li and CTO Mike Lei are both former research scientists with Google U.S. — and Wang said the company’s DNA is heavily influenced by the tech giant.

“We used the Google model from day one,” she told  in an interview. “We wanted to have same culture and team values. The co-operation [on bringing Android Wear to China] went really well… and [Google] showed interest and decided to make an investment.”

On the business and product side, Mobvoi is very Googley, too.

The company is probably best known for Chumenwenwen, a mobile voice search service very much in the style of Siri or Google Now. The service is akin to a virtual butler, allowing users to perform a range of tasks — including search, checking weather, buying items, and more — just using their voice. Wang said the company has struck deals with over 100 content partners to give users access to various services via Chumenwenwen.

Mobvoi used its natural language technology to build out its own smartwatch software, too. Ticwear is a ROM that pairs with Android Wear to make the service — which is kneecapped in China thanks to the government’s blockage of Google services — work in mainland China.

Beyond developing smartwatch software, which works on selected watches like the Moto 360, Mobvoi went a step further and developed its own hardware: the Ticwatch. Wang said the company has sold 30,000 units of the smartwatch, which is priced between $160-$190 in China, but it remains focused on software development.

“Our goal isn’t to be a watch manufacturer, [but] we’re happy to see early adopters buying our product,” she said.

Mobvoice plans to use its new financing to hire talent from across the world and continue refine its software services — Ticwear is updated every two weeks, much like Xiaomi’s approach to its MIUI Android software — while it is also working on its own in-car software and dipping its toes into robotics. Again, that’s much like a Chinafied version of Apple’s CarPlay or Android Auto from Google.

Given the many similarities with Google and reports that the U.S. firm is looking to open up its services in China — and in particular the Google Play Store — is today’s investment a sign that Google has found the company in China to rebuild its business there?

Perhaps there’s even the potential for a full Google buyout in the future?

Not so, according to Wang.

“We value this partnership a lot, and respect Google as an investor, [but it is] still a minority investor and we will focus on what we believe in and in our products,” she told TechCrunch. “We’re not changing what we’ve planned, but there are definitely more opportunities [that will open up].”

Google, for its part, said it has “nothing to announce at this time” when we asked about potential plans to expand the scope of its partnership with Mobvoi and potentially reopen the Google Play Store in China.

The company may be coy on its China plans, but today’s news is undoubted evidence that those plans do exit in some form. Google Inc and its Google Capital VC arm have made investments in China in the past — including a $5 million stake in music and video site Xuneli way back in 2007 — but this deal with Mobvoi is certainly its most strategic to date, and it sets off thoughts about what the search giant has up its sleeve.