India's biggest conglomerate, Tata Group is mulling to construct one of the largest iPhone assembly plants in the country, aligning with Apple Inc.'s goal to boost manufacturing in the South Asian nation, news agency Bloomberg reported on Friday. The proposed manufacturing unit is likely to be situated in Hosur, in Tamil Nadu. The aim is to make the facility operational within 12 to 18 months, featuring approximately 20 assembly lines and a have workforce of 50,000 within two years, the report added.
The proposed plant is poised to strengthen Cupertino, California-headquartered Apple's efforts to localise its supply chain and deepen collaboration with Tata and reduce dependency on China. Currently, the Indian conglomerate manages an iPhone manufacturing unit acquired from Wistron Corp. in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
A report said late last month that Tata is looking to expand the iPhone-casing manufacturing unit in Hosur. The initial investment for the Hosur facility amounted to Rs 5,000 crore. Tata Electronics intends to expand its efficiency in high-end electronics manufacturing by utilising its recently acquired iPhone assembly facility. This strategic move is said to expedite the company's path to growth.
The upcoming plant is said to be of medium size compared to other iPhone factories globally. While it may be one of the largest in India, it will still be notably smaller than the largest iPhone manufacturing facilities in China. To provide context, the Wistron factory acquired by Tata currently employs over 10,000 people, and the reported workforce for the new iPhone factory in Hosur could go up to 50,000.
Notably, the largest Foxconn facilities in China employ hundreds of thousands of workers.
Notably, Tata Group would manufacture Apple iPhones in the country for domestic and international markets, Minister of State (MoS) IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had previosuly said. The MoS IT also congratulated Tata Group for taking over the operations of Wistron's unit. With this, Tata Group will become the first homegrown iPhone maker.
In a first, India-assembled vanilla iPhone 15 and 15 Plus models started retailing in the country on September 22, which was the day of launch.
Apple has been assembling iPhone models in India along with its contract manufacturers Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron (which has been taken over by homegrown Tata Group). Apple is said to have shifted 7 per cent of search iPhone assembling in India. The new iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plusmodels are being manufactured by Apple's contract manufacturer Foxconn's production unit near southern Indian Chennai.