Xiaomi on Tuesday announced the opening of its seventh smartphone manufacturing plant in India. The new manufacturing plant that covers 1 million square feet footprint across Tamil Nadu sees Xiaomi partnering with global electronics manufacturing services company Flex Ltd. The new plant will join Xiaomi’s existing manufacturing plants spread across Noida, Uttar Pradesh; Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.

What all this essentially means is that Xiaomi now has a combined manufacturing capacity of up to 3 smartphones per second during operating hours - “99 per cent of Xiaomi’s smartphones sold locally are (now) made (assembled) in India,” the company said in a statement. It was just over 95 per cent, until April last year. To break it down further, Xiaomi says it is now able to manufacture about 65 per cent value of a typical smartphone using local components which means that a large part of a Xiaomi smartphone is now actually made in India.

Xiaomi’s SMT (Surface Mount Technology) plant of course has a lot to do with it. The SMT plant which was launched last year in partnership with Foxconn is dedicated specifically to local manufacturing of PCBA (Printed Circuit Board Assembly) units and PCBAs constitute as much as 50 per cent of a smartphone.

In addition to boosting its make in India efforts, the seven plants now employ 20,000 people out of which over 95 per cent are women employees, according to Xiaomi.

“We are delighted to announce our new smartphone manufacturing partnership with Flex Ltd. In line with our sincere commitment to Make in India, this new association will further drive our localization efforts; ensuring that we locally design and offer our innovative products with the best specs of highest quality to our Mi Fans in India,” Muralikrishnan B, who is chief operating officer at Xiaomi India said.

Xiaomi announced the opening of its new manufacturing plant on the same day it launched its Mi Pay UPI-based payments app in India - alongside launching the Redmi Go, an Android Go phone designed from scratch for India's masses looking to make a switch from a feature phone to a smartphone.

Also Read: Xiaomi Forays Into India’s UPI Payments Market With Mi Pay, Assures All Data Will Be Stored Locally

Also Read: Xiaomi Redmi Go Launched In India For Rs 4,499: Specs, Features And Everything To Know