OnePlus now has another home in India apart from Banglore HQ. Pete Lue led brand has set up its largest research and development (R&D) center at Hyderabad. The company intends to put in more than ₹1000 crores of investment in the next three years.
The R&D facility in Hyderabad is OnePlus’s third one following Shenzhen and Taipei. The Hyderabad setup is the biggest OnePlus R&D center in the world now. Currently, only a portion of the facility that spread over 186000 square feet is operational with over 200 employees working. The company plans to employ about 1500 people once the entire facility gets operational.
OnePlus’ Ramagopala Reddy Palukuri will be heading this facility as company’s vice president for R&D in India. As per the company, this new R&D facility, be innovating new software feature for both the Indian markets as well as the global market.
What OnePlus will do at Hyderabad R&D center?
During the inauguration event, Pete Lau revealed the company’s plans related to Vamsiram’s Sohini Tech Park, Nanakramguda, Hyderabad based R&D center. He said that the R&D facility works closely on three aspects of OnePlus phones – cameras, networking, and automation testing.
OnePlus has a dedicated camera lab in Taiwan. The company now wants to set up its second camera lab in India which is its biggest market. Apart from Cameras, the new R&D facility will also work on 5G connectivity and feature to help OnePlus ship 5G phones to Europe and the UK. OnePlus in collaboration with Qualcomm and major telecom providers in India to conduct 5G field-testing when 5G spectrum trials take place later in the year.
The new R&D facility will also develop new OxygenOS features for India and the World.
Why OnePlus so much focus on India?
India played a key roll in OnePlus success story especially at the time when Industry has seen cut-throat competition. OnePlus claims to in the pole position in the premium smartphone segment in India. With 43 percent market share in premium and ultra-premium Indian market, OnePlus has managed to rank among top four premium smartphone companies of the world.
With US and China trade tension escalating, OnePlus is looking at India as a market as well as a manufacturing destination. Currently, OnePlus assembles all Indian retail units in Noida facility. With the decline in the Chinese smartphone market and trade tension, OnePlus plans to ramp up its production in line with the Indian government’s Make in India strategy.
While addressing the gathering Pete Lau said, “In three years, we plan to grow the new R&D centre in Hyderabad into our biggest globally. We plan to re-focus our R&D efforts on a large scale and drive innovations in India for the global product, especially on the software side with special emphasis on Artificial Intelligence, 5G and IoT.”
Other than the R&D center, OnePlus is also planning to open 15 OnePlus experience stores and over 1500 partner stores for offline buyers. Out of those 15, the first OnePlus experience store is currently being developed in Hyderabad and is likely to become operational by the next quarter.
