India approves Vivo-Dixon joint venture for smartphone manufacturing

India on July 9 approved Dixon Technologies’ joint venture with Vivo Mobile India, clearing the way for a new handset maker that will be 51% owned by Dixon and 49% by Vivo Mobile India. The company will manufacture smartphones and other electronic devices in India, start with 5 crore in paid-up capital, and act as an original equipment manufacturer that can also produce for other brands.

The clearance matters because it lands inside the government’s revised Press Note 3 framework, the rule set that has governed Chinese and other land-border-country investments since 2020. Press Note 3 was introduced during the pandemic to curb opportunistic takeovers, but the March 2026 revision eased some FDI conditions, allowed up to 10% non-controlling ownership from land-bordering countries under the automatic route in select cases, and kept majority Indian ownership and control mandatory.

For Vivo, the venture offers a more protected path into India’s manufacturing base while reducing the operational risk of running capacity alone. The companies first sketched the deal in December 2024 as a non-binding term sheet, and later moved to definitive agreements after approval. Reports say operations are expected to begin in the December quarter of this fiscal year, with the venture ultimately aiming to produce millions of smartphone units annually.

The broader context is India’s faster-moving electronics push, which has been powered in part by Apple’s expansion. Apple exports from India reached a record 1,10,989 crore, or US$12.8 billion, in 2024, while smartphone exports crossed 1 lakh crore in the first five months of FY 2025-26, a 55% increase from a year earlier. That scale gives the Dixon-Vivo venture a bigger stage, but also a sharper test: whether it adds local value through deeper manufacturing, or simply repackages assembly under a domestic label.