By Subhrojit Mallick
Copyright indiatimes
London-based smartphone brand Nothing is expanding its presence in India with a joint venture with contract manufacturer Optiemus Electronics. Together, they will invest over $100 million in India over the next three years, creating over 1,800 jobs, the two companies said in a joint statement Thursday.Nothing is also spinning off its affordable sub-brand CMF as an independent subsidiary headquartered in India. The country will become the subsidiary’s operations, R&D, and manufacturing hub, the company said.”…With our end-to-end capabilities, we are uniquely positioned to now build it into India’s first truly global smartphone brand,” Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing, said in the statement.The two companies will form a JV, with Optiemus owning a 65% stake, while Nothing will hold the remaining stake and become the anchor customer for the JV, industry executives aware of the development said. Initial volumes will range between 300,000 and 400,000 units a month and will scale up with demand.Optiemus, which is eligible to claim incentives under the mobile phone production-linked incentive scheme, will manufacture smartphones and wearables for Nothing and CMF, both for the domestic market and for exports. This is the company’s first foray into smartphones during the tenure of the five-year PLI scheme.Live Events”This partnership goes beyond high-tech manufacturing—it will empower us to create export-ready products that will be designed in India, showcasing the innovation and talent of our people to the world in the coming years,” said Ashok Gupta, Chairman of Optiemus Infracom.Gupta added that with this joint venture, the company will scale up its mobile phone manufacturing play in India.Nothing also had an agreement with iSmartu, the manufacturing arm of Transsion India, which is now owned by Dixon Technologies.According to executives cited above, this entire share of production will now shift to the Optiemus-Nothing JV, which is part of a binding agreement.Before the announcement, Nothing had been strengthening its team in India, appointing key personnel to expand its business. Co-founder Akis Evangelidis shifted base to India earlier this year to scale up operations. The CMF subsidiary also appointed former Poco country head Himanshu Tandon as Vice President to lead the CMF business.Nothing also recently announced its $200 million Series C funding at a $1.3 billion valuation, led by Tiger Global, with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath joining as one of the new investors.”This move makes sense since CMF has found a market in the budget segments in both phones and wearables in India. This will only allow for a more focused approach to take on intense competition in these segments from established players like Xiaomi, realme, vivo, Motorola, boAt, Noise, etc.,” said Navkendar Singh, Associate Vice President at IDC India.Nothing’s volume share in India has been steadily increasing, even though its overall presence is still negligible in the market. The company’s more premium Nothing brand had a volume share of 1.2% of the 37.2 million units shipped in Q2 2025, up from 0.7% last year, IDC said.”Another driver could be that Nothing wants to avoid having a VFM (value-for-money) rub-off on itself coming from CMF. That makes sense since Nothing seems to be focused on the mid-premium end of the market,” Singh added.While Nothing operates at an average selling price of around $280, CMF’s ASP has ranged between $160 and $180, IDC said.Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now!
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