The products will be priced between Rs 3,900 and Rs 1 lakh and the firm is targeting a base of 10 million users in India over the next five years, Vijay Singh, vice chairman and MD Hyundai India Telecom said in New Delhi.
Under the MoU signed between them, HITL will utilise the Rs 200 crore funding assistance for the import operations of hi-end technology mobile handsets while Hyundai India will spend Rs 45 crore (Rs 450 million) out of which Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) as capital expenditure and Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) will be advertising expense in the first year, Singh said.
Aravind Pandalai, CMD, STC said "We have confidence in the rapidly growing business of mobile handsets and our gain will be in terms of revenue share from the sales."
He declined to divulge the revenue share details. Singh said HITL is looking at tying up with the operators for GSM phones also when the phones will be available for customers in January next year. The company will introduce 15 models in January. There will be non-3G models too.
He said the direction of Indian mobile users is going hi-tech where he can get voice, video and data together on a handset and it is for this reason the company has decided to introduce 3G models in India.
"India has a better chance of adopting 3G technology as here networks are new and almost all the operators are 3G ready in their network", Singh said.