Calcutta, Aug. 7: Videocon Industries will launch a mobile manufacturing unit at its Salt Lake facility on August 16.

"We will inaugurate the handset making unit at our Salt Lake facility on August 16," said Indrajit Ghosh, chief operating officer of KAIL Limited (Videocon Group), at the ICT East event here today.

Videocon will initially manufacture three million handsets in a year, both in the feature and smartphone segments. The company has plans to produce five million units going forward.

Ghosh said the Calcutta unit would also manufacture handsets for other brands in the future. The company manufactures LED television sets at this facility.

Videocon had entered the mobile manufacturing industry about four years ago.

At present, the company manufactures mobile handsets under the Videocon and Sansui brands at its Aurangabad facility, which has a production capacity of three million units per year.

"In Bengal, we have a 2-3 per cent market share in the mobile phones segment," said Ghosh. The company's investment at the Salt Lake facility will be Rs 50 crore and will create around 500 jobs.

Security concerns

India is trying hard to build digitised smart cities where everything from household appliances to medical equipment are online and can be accessed remotely. However, experts are worried that lack of enough security may create havoc with these systems.

"Hacking into medical devices can lead to a murder. Internet connected CCTV can help robbers to monitor our houses remotely to plan a robbery. A remote oven can be hacked and mis-configured to set a house afire," said Sandeep Sengupta, CEO of Indian School of Anti-Hacking, at an event here.

Sengupta said we put all our devices online, right from our home appliances to digitised ICU, driverless cars and even wearable health monitoring devices. But we are not armed enough to protect ourselves from hackers.

"India went straight from no telephones to the latest in mobile technology without any awareness on how to keep the devices safe and secure. This is why India is the fifth most cyber-crime affected country," said Tobby Simon, president of Synergia Foundation.

He added that it explained the need for more awareness and government guidelines and regulations. IoT is projected to generate business worth around $511 billion - which is 1.1 per cent of the national GDP - in the next five years.