Close on the heels of Nokia announcing its plans to set up a plant in India, Hyundai India Telecom Ltd on Friday said it will set up a manufacturing unit and R&D hub in India.

The company will also invest $50 million over the next five years in India. Hyundai India Telecom has received the licence from Hyundai Korea Corporation for these plans.

The manufacturing plant will make the entire range of mobile handsets -- both GSM and CDMA -- and 50 per cent of the production will be sold in the domestic market with the remaining in overseas markets like Asian and SAARC regions.

The production facility with five assembly lines, whose location has not been decided, will have a capacity of 4000 handsets daily and an annual capacity of 1.2 million phones in the first year and can be scaled up to triple the capacity depending on the demand, Vijay R Singh, vice chairman, HIT, told reporters.

Hyundai Telecom had earlier announced a marketing tie-up with State Trading Corporation to sell its handsets in India.

"We strongly believe we can meet the growing mobile handset demand of this country and also create newer segments and markets by setting up manufacturing and R&D hub here," he said.

The R&D unit would help in creating a cutting edge software design and user-friendly applications which will address the needs of mobile handset users.

HIT is in discussion with leading software companies of India for tie-ups to develop localised mobile applications and software for these handsets.