HP India is currently in talks with VVDN Technologies and Dixon Technologies to assemble its laptops in the country. HP India, the India arm of the American laptop maker is one of the 27 companies eligible for the PLI scheme 2.0 for IT hardware, for which Rs 17,000 crore has been earmarked as incentives.

While HP India already has its own assembly plant and a partnership with US-headquartered Flex for laptop assembly, it is seeking assembly- only deals with Sunil Vachani-led Dixon and VVDN, both of which are also eligible for production-linked incentives.

Under this arrangement, HP India would provide all the components for manufacturing, a process also known as jobwork. VVDN has already inked a partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to assemble servers at its Manesar plant in Haryana. The factory is expected to produce high-end servers valued at USD one billion over the next five years.

Both VVDN Technologies and Dixon Technologies are already collaborating with chipmaker Intel, which provides them with key technological insights to establish a robust laptop manufacturing industry in India. Dixon, an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) player in India, won a contract in December 2023 to assemble both laptops and notebooks for Lenovo in India. It also assembles Motorola feature phones for HMD India, which owns the brand. In 2021, Dixon entered into a partnership to assemble Acer laptops in India.

To meet the requirements, Dixon is investing Rs 250 crore to set up a plant in Noida with the capacity to produce one million laptops per annum. The plant is expected to be operational soon. In India, HP India is the largest PC player across all segments, holding a 31.5 percent market share in 2023, according to IDC Research.

It is followed by Lenovo at 16.7 percent, Dell at 15.5 percent, and Acer at 12.3 percent. In the laptop segment alone, HP leads with a 33.2 percent share, followed by Dell at 23.1 percent and Lenovo at 14.7 percent. The Indian laptop market was valued at close to USD eight billion in 2023, with 65 per cent of the units being imported. The reworked PLI scheme aims to significantly reduce these imports and promote domestic manufacturing.