The company hopes to achieve a lower lead time-to-market of around 10 days instead of the present 21 days and build an inventory to allow for higher customisation.

Initially, the plan is to manufacture PCs for the commercial sector and the line may be expanded later to include other segments and products, according to managing director and chief executive Ranjit Limaye. There is no plan to manufacture servers at present.

It has so far been importing fully-built machines from its Singapore plant. It has got permission to manufacture 40,000 PCs per annum in a single shift at the Pondicherry plant which will be augmented if the demand looks up.Though Limaye refused to discuss the pricing strategy, the price of the entry-level general purpose GL series PCs with a Celeron is likely to be lower at around Rs 45,000 and Rs 48,000 as against Rs 50,000 presently.The company has manufacturing units in Japan, China and Singapore. At a later date, IBM India plant is also slated to export PCs to other neighbouring countries in the sub-continent, Limaye said. The company claims to have a five per cent share of the branded personal computers market, which is presently around 5 lakh units and is almost equally divided among the multinational brands like Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and IBM and the domestic players like HCL and Zenith.

With a reduced lead time-to-market and possibility of higher customisation, it aims to increase the share to around 10 to 12 per cent at a later stage, Limaye said.

``Local manufacturing will help us reach the products to our customers faster and give us the flexibility to configure the systems to specific customer requirements,'' said Limaye.

Initially, IBM will source all components from its global vendors. Depending on the demand situation, it will either develop local OEMs or invite its vendors to set up operations in India.

Limaye refused to divulge the turnover target for PC operations, or the investment made in setting up the new plant, and added that PCs would remain a small portion of Indian subsidiary's spectrum of operations. The major chunk of revenue for the company will come from its substantial software operations.