After Nokia, LG and Motorola it was the turn of another South Korean telecom giant Hyundai to announce its setting up of a manufacturing unit in India with fifty percent of the output to be reserved for exporting to Saarc and other Asian countries.

Hyundai India Telecom (HIT), the Indian arm of Hyundai Korea Corporation, will invest 50 million dollars in India in the next five years and manufacture the entire range of high-end mobile phone handsets for GSM and CDMA, HIT Vice-chairman and Managing Director Vijay Singh told reporters here on Friday.

He said the plant, which will provide employment to 1000 people, will have a capacity of manufacturing 1.2 million handsets in the first year and there will be room to ramp up the output to three times, depending on demand.

Half of the production will be sold in India and the rest to countries in South Asia and other parts of the Asian continent, according to Singh.