Dell has started production at its new manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur, India, the company said Monday.

The new facility, with an initial production capacity of 400,000 desktops a year, will focus on addressing the booming Indian PC market. Dell plans to invest about $30 million over five years in the plant.

Located near Chennai in southern India, it joins Dell's two other Asian manufacturing operations in Penang, Malaysia, and Xiamen, China.

Earlier this year, Dell began manufacturing at a new facility in Brazil, with another scheduled to open in Poland later this year.

India’s PC market exceeded 5 million units last year, posting a 25 percent cent year-on-year growth in unit shipments, according to research firm IDC (India) in Gurgaon.

Last week, Lenovo Group announced plans to establish a manufacturing facility in Baddi in northern India. It will be the company's second facility in the country. The other plant in Pondicherry in the southern part of the country came to Lenovo after the company acquired IBM’s PC business in 2005.

The two facilities in India will help Lenovo better service both the northern and southern parts of India, a spokeswoman for Lenovo said.

The new facility in Himachal Pradesh, to be operational later this year, will make both notebook and desktop computers with a production capacity of 2 million units a year.

Hewlett-Packard also runs two manufacturing facilities in India. The Bangalore facility in southern India has a capacity of 75,000 units a year, according to a spokeswoman. The one in Uttaranchal in the northern part of the country, which started production in March, has a capacity of 500,000 units a year.