More wearables, hearables get India-made printed circuit boards

The wearables segment has seen rapid growth, clocking 46.9% year-on-year growth in 2022 as shipments reached 100 million, as per IDC India.

Dixon Technologies, which manufactures hearables for Imagine Marketing (Boat), the largest wearables brand in India, will introduce SMT (surface-mount technology) for circuit boards for hearables in April with a capacity of 1.2 million pieces a month, said Sunil Vachani, chairman, Dixon Technologies. “As we speak, the machine roll-out for SMT is happening now. We should get started in May-June. We are looking at 1.2 million pieces a month, 15 million in a year,” he said.

He said with SMT in place, local value addition will go up to 25%, from 15% at present.

The electronics manufacturer employs 2,000 people for hearables production. A new factory coming up in Noida will double the headcount to 4,000 people, said Vachani.

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Optiemus has secured capacity to make circuit boards for both hearables and wearables, and is open to supplying them to other electronics manufacturers.

“We have set up a capacity to make about 3-4 million boards a month, only for hearables and wearables,” said Nitesh Gupta, director, Optiemus Electronics.

“Our plan is not just to make for our in-house customers, but also for customers who are not doing assemblies with us. Because not all manufacturing facilities would have high quality SMT available with them,” he added.

Optiemus Electronics manufactures mainly for Noise, the second largest wearable brand in India. Till 2022, Noise accounted for 70-80% of the company’s business, but that has come down to 50% as business grew with other customers, said Gupta.

He said the company is now in talks to make wearables for a Chinese smartphone brand, along with software startups looking to get into the wearables segment with their own smartwatches.

Gupta said manufacturing PCBs is as per the phased manufacturing process for wearables, as notified by the government. “When you start manufacturing the printed circuit boards, you get to understand what sort of components go into it. Then you can start procuring the components yourself, which gives you a little bit of control over the supply chain,” he said.

Doing so can enable Optiemus Electronics to push for local alternatives, thereby becoming critical to the ecosystem.