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Videocon to foray into mobile handsets mfg Along with televisions, air-conditioners, refrigerators and other durables, Videocon Industries will also make mobile phone handsets now. The handsets will be manufactured at its new plant in Kashipur, Uttaranchal. Venugopal Dhoot, chairman, Videocon Industries, said, “We will manufacture mobile handsets to support our telecom business at the new plant, which will become operational soon.” Similar to the durables, the handsets will be branded ‘Videocon’. The manufacturing facility has a capacity of about 1 crore handsets per year. It will also produce 2.5 lakh units of air-conditioners and five lakh units of refrigerators, along and possible washing machines and television sets also. The Rs 200-crore greenfield plant has been delayed by almost a year, mainly due to the delay in securing permissions form the government. Even now, Videocon officials say that they are ready to go kick-off operations but the power connection is yet to be cleared. Videocon is planning to have a 360 degrees approach to the telecom business. It will soon be launching the services in 22 circles through its subsidiary Datacom. Initial investments of Rs 6,000 crore have been lined up for the rollout of GSM services. The company is eyeing 2.5 million subscribers in the next three years. A lot of news seems to be flooding in regarding the consumer durables telecom business. While Videocon has made an initial offer to buy Motorola’s handset business and sources say it is expecting something fruitful to come out of that, it is also in talks with international telecom operators for a joint venture. Names such as AT&T, Deutsche Telecom and others have been floating around. “We are in talks with a couple of international players but nothing has been finalised so it is too soon to announce any names,” said Dhoot.