In a fillip to the ‘Make in India’ initiative, PC and printer major HP on Thursday announced a collaboration with Google to manufacture its Chromebooks in India. The Chromebook devices will be manufactured at the Flex Facility near Chennai, where HP has been producing a range of laptops and desktops since August 2020.
The production of HP Chromebooks is starting from October 2, and will cater to the demand for affordable PCs in India mainly from the education sector, the company said in a statement.
“Manufacturing Chromebook laptops in India will allow Indian students to get easy access to affordable PCs. By further expanding our manufacturing operations, we continue to support the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the government,” said Vickram Bedi, Senior Director-Personal Systems, HP India.
Reacting to this development, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology of India Rajeev Chandrasekhar hailed PM Narendra Modi’s vision and policies in respect to bolstering Make In India initiatives.
“Good to see Google plan manufacturing their chromebook devices in India. PM Narendra Modijis vision & PLI policies are fast making India a preferred partner in Electronics Manufctrng and most recent IT Hardware PLI2.0 PLI will catalyze laptop and server mnfg in India,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar wrote on X.
Chromebooks quite popular in India
Chromebooks are leading devices in K-12 education, helping over 50 million students and teachers across the world. Equipped with ChromeOS, these devices have built-in accessibility and security features to deepen classroom connections and keep user information safe.
“The local production of Chromebooks with HP marks an important step in our efforts to continue supporting the digital transformation of education in India,” said Bani Dhawan, Head of Education-South Asia, Google.
From December 2021, HP started manufacturing a wide range of laptops in India, including HP EliteBooks, HP ProBooks, and HP G8 series notebooks.
HP also expanded its portfolio of locally manufactured commercial desktops by adding various models of desktop mini towers (MT), mini desktops (DM), small form factor (SFF) desktops, and a range of All-in-One PCs.
These products include both Intel and AMD processor options and cater to a wide range of customer segments.
