Homegrown smartphone brand AI+ scales up with Rs 7,500 crore revenue target
NxtQuantum founder Madhav Sheth said AI+ is leveraging his experience in the smartphone industry to build a globally competitive Indian brand, targeting ₹7,500 crore revenue this fiscal while expanding research, local manufacturing and the domestic component ecosystem
New Delhi: With over 20 years of industry experience, including building mobile phone brands in the Chinese ecosystem like Realme, NxtQuantum founder Madhav Sheth says he is applying that learning to build the Indian smartphone brand AI+ to compete with global smartphones. In an interview with PTI, Sheth said his bootstrapped company launched its first smartphone in September 2025 and garnered revenue of Rs 965 crore in the first fiscal year.
He said that the company expects to grow multifold to over Rs 7,500 crore in the current fiscal year, which will be the company’s first full financial year of operations.
NxtQuantum Shift Technology is a 100 per cent Indian company. With more than two decades of experience in this industry, building brands into the Chinese ecosystem like Realme, learning the Chinese supply chain to economies of scale, the company is building a particular homegrown brand from scratch, Sheth said.
He has earlier also worked for Oppo and the Honor brand. “There is a huge potential in the Indian market. There is a huge consumption in India. I believe that brand has to be from India to build the component ecosystem in India itself. The current ecosystem, whatever it is, has been controlled by foreign brands, and hence the local development of the component ecosystem was extremely difficult,” he noted.
He said that if the brand has to be built locally, then the dependency of the brand would be more on building the local supply chain rather than only depending on the foreign supply chain, which will help grow the entire ecosystem.
Sheth said the company continues to look for partnerships to strengthen its technology that can compete globally.He said that in a market of USD 40-50 billion, there is no Indian smartphone brand that is globally competitive.
“In the last just six months of operations, we have closed more than Rs 965 crore worth of revenue. In the first quarter of this year, we have more than Rs 1,650 crore worth of revenue. This year we will be closing at Rs 6,000 crore, and we are already on the way to achieving it before Diwali itself. We will be crossing more than Rs 7,500 crore because Q3 is the biggest quarter for smartphones,” Sheth said.
Sheth said the government’s recent Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) will help the company in building the brand as it comes with provision of support for research and development.
“The most important thing in MPMS is that the government has proposed 3 per cent for R&D for the Indian brands. We really wanted this type of support from the government. We want to invest a huge amount into R&D. AI+ has invested Rs 60 crore in building the software, the team and putting up the servers in India, ensuring that the data doesn’t go outside India,” Sheth said.
The government under MPMS has announced plans to create a globally competitive Indian mobile brand. Sheth said that the company is planning to invest in the testing labs and scale up the research and development facility.
“We have built our own servers; we have built our own source code. We are building our own testing teams, we are building our own hardware teams. Our R&D team is going to be more than around 150 people, with 30 expats who are going to train them in hardware, software and testing. We plan to develop the entire phone, not only just in India but also to try to develop the component ecosystem in India,” he noted.
The company has till date launched five smartphone models in the range of Rs 10,000 to Rs 30,000. “We are focused on quality, designs, and price to deliver value to consumers. That is the reason we have sold more than 20 lakh units from day 1 of our inception. This has been the fastest for any smartphone brand in Indian history,” Sheth said.
