Trisha Ghosh, Pune
Foxconn, a supplier of Apple, has recently decided to boost its production of iPhones in India by 2024. As per an official from the company, their upcoming plan is to double their workforce in the country along with their investments in India.
Foxconn is a company based in Taiwan. Its decision to increase its manufacturing, investments and workers in India stems from its desire to cease reliance on China as a manufacturing hub. The company’s Taiwanese representative of India clearly mentioned, in a post intended for the celebration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 73rd birthday, that Foxconn aims to doubly increase employment, foreign direct investment (FDI) and its scale of business in India approximately by September 2024.
As of now, Foxconn has 9 production sites in India and over 30 factories. One of the most significant areas of presence held by Foxconn is a factory located in the state of Tamil Nadu, which produces iPhones and currently employs around 40,000 workers. The organisation’s manufacturing units are to extend across a few more southern states, including Karnataka, wherein official statements have revealed that Foxconn plans to invest $600 million for a couple of projects that will be focused on making iPhone casing materials and equipment to produce chips.
As per a report in Bloomberg, Foxconn will soon invest in a large site close to Bengaluru airport to create a production plant for manufacturing and assembling iPhones. This is expected to give rise to around 100,000 jobs.
Being the world’s largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn’s drastic shift away from China to India not only highlights the prevailing issues between China and Taiwan, but is also indicative of the growing tensions between Washington and Beijing, with Apple being an American company.
The company’s Chairman Liu Young-way has stated that he sees large potential in India and remarked that these are merely the beginning of investments.