Tata to establish a new iPhone manufacturing facility in India, aiming to accelerate Apple’s growth in the country; Expected to create job opportunities for 50,000 individuals.
Tata Group, a conglomerate, intends to construct a large-scale iPhone assembly facility in India, aligning with Apple Inc.’s objective to expand its manufacturing operations in the South Asian nation.
Tata wants to build a plant in Hosur in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, according to people familiar with the matter. The plant is likely to have about 20 assembly lines and employ 50,000 workers within two years, according to the people, who declined to be named to discuss the unannounced plans. The goal is to have the site up and running in 12-18 months.
The plant would bolster Apple’s efforts to localize its supply chain and strengthen its partnership with Tata, which already has an iPhone factory it bought from Wistron Corp. in neighboring Karnataka state. Apple is diversifying its operations away from China by partnering with assembly and component manufacturing partners in India, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere.
An Apple spokesperson declined to comment, while a Tata representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Read more about diversifying Apple’s supply chain
The Indian conglomerate has taken other steps to increase its business with Apple and expand its legacy businesses, which range from salt to software. It has accelerated hiring at its existing facility in Hosur, where it makes iPhone cases or metal cases. Tata has also said it will open 100 retail stores focused on Apple products. Apple, meanwhile, has opened two stores in the country and is planning three more.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s production-linked subsidies have prompted Apple’s main suppliers, such as Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp., to increase their operations in India. This helped Apple assemble more than $7 billion worth of iPhones in India in the previous fiscal year, taking the country’s share of the device’s output to about 7 percent. The rest are assembled in China, which a few years ago manufactured them all.
The new factory is set to be mid-sized among iPhone factories worldwide. It would likely be larger than Tata’s acquisition of Wistron, which employs more than 10,000 people, and smaller than Foxconn’s largest Chinese factories, which employ hundreds of thousands.
Apple and Tata are likely to urge the government to provide subsidies for the new plant, which is expected to begin production just as previous government-backed financial incentives expire.
