Prominent Taiwan-based iPhone maker – Foxconn is doubling down on its investment in India. In a major boost to PM Modi’s call for Make in India, the contract manufacturer is planning to invest up to $1 billion in to expand its factory in Sriperumbudur (near Chennai) where it makes iPhone XR, Reuters reported citing sources. The move is part of Apple’s move to gradually move production away from China amid the ongoing trade war between the US and the Asian powerhouse along with the Covid pandemic.
The investment planned by Foxconn will be made over a three-year period and around 6,000 jobs will be created at the Sriperumbudur plant. The company will also manufacture some of the other iPhone models at the same plant that it makes in China. Foxconn also makes smartphones for Chinese firm Xiaomi at another plant in Andhra Pradesh.
Foxconn’s Chairman Liu Young-way had last month said that the company will be investing more in India in the coming months, Reuters had reported. “We are fully pushing ahead with next steps there, and maybe in a few months’ time, we can reveal on our website the next steps and report back to everyone. We’ll have a further investment there,” Liu Young-way had said at the company’s annual general meeting. In April this year, Foxconn Technology Group Chairman Tery Gou had said that iPhones will get into mass production in India this year, Bloomberg reported. “In the future we will play a very important role in India’s smartphone industry,” Gou said at an event in Taiwan.
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In order to boost electronics manufacturing in India, the government in April had notified three schemes that offer incentives worth close to Rs 48,000 crore. These included the promotion of manufacturing of electronic components and semiconductors, Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0) Scheme, and production linked incentive scheme for large scale electronics manufacturing. Rs 40,000 crore of incentives will be allocated for the production-linked incentive scheme, the Cabinet had said. The PLI scheme is likely to create up to 8 lakh jobs over five years out of which 2 lakh jobs are expected to come through direct employment and 6 lakh jobs through indirect employment.
