Carl Zeiss' plant near Bengaluru airport to be ready in 9 months

ZEISS India signs MOU with Government of Karnataka

Global optical lens major Carl Zeiss's new plant near Bengaluru airport is expected to be ready within nine months.

"Our fifth and largest plant in India, located in Devanahalli (near Bengaluru airport), will focus on lens manufacturing and also include some industrial quality solutions for metrology businesses. It is expected to be ready in eight to nine months, with 50-60 percent of the construction already complete," Dhaval Radia, chief financial officer, Zeiss India, said on March 6

He was talking to media after his company signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Karnataka government to enhance rural eye care under its CSR initiative.

As part of the two-year Vidya Drishti campaign, driven by the Aloka Vision Programme, Zeiss India and the state government will screen 5.32 lakh schoolchildren (in the 5-16 age bracket) and six lakh underprivileged adults (aged above 39) in Kalaburagi, providing prescription glasses where needed.

Radia said the Devanahalli plant is a large facility that will generate significant job opportunities as production scales up over the next three to four years. "It will serve both the Indian market and export customers in Asia and Europe," he said.

Radia also said talked about Zeiss's CSR-funded partnership with IISc, Bengaluru, to advance AI-driven eye-care research.

"While still in the early stages, the collaboration aims to streamline eye testing using AI. The initiative, launched last year, recently saw the inauguration of a research center at IISc, where students and Zeiss's Centre of Application Research in India are developing software and prototypes," he said.

Radia said that Carl Zeiss's Global Capability Centre at Prestige Tech Park near Marathahalli, inaugurated in November, can accommodate 600 engineers, developers, and innovators.