Wistron has announced the establishment of a joint venture in Noida, a planned new town in northern India, with Optiemus Infracom, an India-based mobile telecom device distributor.

Wistron president Robert Huang and Optiemus president Ravinder Zutshi signed an MoU for the joint venture in New Delhi on November 24. The Taiwan-based Wistron will hold a 20% stake in the joint venture.

With a factory under construction, the joint venture will produce telecom devices and start trial production with initial workforce of 4,000 in March 2016, Wistron said. Wistron and Optiemus plan to jointly invest US$200 million in the new entity in 3-5 years and increase its workforce to 15,000 in three years.

Optiemus markets telecom devices under own brand Zen Mobiles, and it is also a sales agent for Taiwan-based smartphone vendor HTC. In the future, the joint venture will undertake ODM/OEM production of Zen Mobiles and HTC devices.

The joint venture enables Wistron to provide manufacturing services in India and bring well-developed ODM technology and business model to the emerging market, Huang said. Wistron hopes to tap the India market of telecom devices via Optiemus' marketing network, Huang indicated.

Optiemus hopes to provide integrated solutions covering design, production, marketing, retail and after-sale services for own-brand clients through partnership with Wistron and aims to be among the top-3 India-based telecom device vendors in 3-5 years, Zutshi said.