Xiaomi becomes the latest tech firm to move some manufacturing from China to India

Xiaomi, the Chinese tech company behind the popular Xiaomi, Redmi, and POCO smartphones, is going to start making the wireless audio products that it sells in India, in India. The announcement was made by Xiaomi’s Muralikrishnan B on Twitter who said the move reinforces Xiaomi’s commitment to Make in India.

According to Reuters, which also reported the news, Xiaomi already manufactures most of the smartphones and televisions it sells in India locally, but this wasn’t the case with audio products. The company didn’t specify which audio products would be made in India, but it sells speakers, earbuds, and headphones in the country.

Ever since the pandemic, tech companies have realized that producing everything they need in a handful of countries is not a particularly good idea, especially when one of them, China, had a very strict lockdown that hampered production. The Make in India campaign is much older than the pandemic, though.

Make in India has been around since near the start of Narendra Modi’s time in power. The objective of the programme is threefold: to increase the manufacturing sector’s growth rate by 12-14% per year, to create 100 million additional manufacturing jobs in the economy by 2022, and to make sure the manufacturing sector makes up 25% of the country’s GDP by 2025.

The Make in India campaign has come along for manufacturers at just the right time. For decades they have manufactured goods in China but as wages rise, it becomes a less appealing manufacturing hub. According to an India Times article from 2017, wages in China were five times higher than those in India at the time.

As mentioned in the tweet, Xiaomi will partner with the manufacturer Optiemus to bring the manufacturing to India. The audio gadgets will be manufactured in a factory in Uttar Pradesh. Xiaomi has said that it wants to increase its production in India by 50% by 2025.