Optiemus to Hire 2,000 People in 2 Years, Enhance Production Capacity

Electronics manufacturing services firm, Optiemus Electronics is planning to expand its production capacity and aims to increase its headcount by around 2,000 people in the next two years, a senior company official said.

“The company's existing production capacity is likely to be exhausted within two years and it has started looking for locations to set up a new manufacturing unit,” A Gururaj, Managing Director at Optiemus Electronics Limited, said. 

At present, the company has a team of 300 people.

OEL is among the electronic manufacturing services firms that have qualified for production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes for mobile phones, IT hardware and telecom products. The government is giving incentives to companies under the PLI scheme based on the investments they make and incremental sales on a year-on-year basis.

"We will have to wait and see how much volume our customers will look at, but I do believe that over the next one to one-and-a-half years, at least a couple of thousand people will be added on the shop floor, if not more," Gururaj added.

The company has signed an agreement with its old joint venture partner and Apple's contract partner, Wistron to jointly work on boosting production of mobile devices, IT hardware, telecom equipment etc. In August, it stated that it will invest Rs 1,350 crore in the manufacturing of mobile phones and telecom gear to generate revenue of Rs 38,000 crore in the next 3-5 years from electronics manufacturing services and create 11,000 jobs.

Gururaj said that the very reason to sign up with Wistron was to create world-class facilities out of India, and world-class facilities come with world-class people.

"We are doing a lot of hand picking of people when we hire the people and that is our biggest focus right now to get the right manpower with the right experience. Given that the product portfolio will be wide, mobile phones, laptops, servers and wearables, etc, it is a wide space of working," Gururaj said.

The company has reportedly started looking for locations to set up a new factory as present capacity is expected to be exhausted within two years.

"It takes time getting the land and building approvals, etc to get moving. We have seen aggressive traction, in terms of pipeline, we believe that the present infrastructure will last us about two years, after which we have already started work on looking at expanding our facilities thereafter," Gururaj stated.

OEL has two manufacturing plants in Noida, Uttar Pradesh with a total combined manufacturing capacity of 20 lakh devices per month.