Handset Makers To Hire 60,000 Staff Amid Growing Industry Demand, Push For Local Manufacturing: Report

India is currently giving a push to local manufacturing that has given way to top smartphone OEMs and their manufacturing partners to set up local assembly units in the country.

Handset makers are mulling to hire as many as 60,000 staffers in the next 6-12 months, to cater to the industry's demands, according to the staffing companies, says a report by ET Telecom. According to supply chain firm TeamLease Services Ltd., it has 5,000 open positions in handset manufacturing while Ciel HR Services said that it has 2,000 open posts, as per its CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra. India is currently giving a push to local manufacturing that has given way to top smartphone OEMs and their manufacturing partners to set up local assembly units in the country.

The hiring is taking place in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

"We are expecting 40,000-60,000 direct jobs in phone manufacturing pan India by March 2024," TeamLease's Kartik Narayan was quoted as saying in the report.

Apart from this, as many as 80,0000-100,000 indirect jobs are would be created in the next two years, amid the industry's growing demand.

It should be noted that locally manufactured mobile phone shipments crossed the 2 billion cumulative units mark under the "Make in India" initiative during 2014-2022, registering a 23 per cent CAGR, says market research firm Counterpoint Research. This was driven by huge internal demand, increasing digital literacy and the government's push. India has also become the second-biggest mobile phone-producing country in the world.

In a bid to push local manufacturing and value addition, the Indian government has introduced schemes and initiatives such as the Phased Manufacturing Program (PMP), Make in India, Production Linked Incentive (PLI) and Atma-Nirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India).

“India has come a long way in mobile phone manufacturing. We have seen local manufacturing increase over the years to meet domestic demand. In 2022, more than 98% of shipments in the overall Indian market were ‘Made in India’, compared to just 19% when the current government took over in 2014. We have also seen increasing local value addition and supply chain development in the country. Local value addition in India currently stands at an average of more than 15%, compared to the low single digits eight years ago," Tarun Pathak, Research Director at Counterpoint, said in a statement.