Bengaluru: Apple’s main supplier, Foxconn Technology Group, plans to increase its investments to more than $1.2 billion in southern India’s Karnataka state and add two component factories there.
At least one of the factories that the Taiwanese company plans to construct in Karnataka will produce Apple parts, including for iPhones, people familiar with the matter said. A formal announcement is expected as early as this week, the people said, declining to be named as the matter isn’t public. The second plant will also be in Karnataka, but their exact location has yet to be decided.
Foxconn is spending $500 million on these two complexes on top of a $700 million facility it aims to build on a 300-acre site close to the airport in Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka, Bloomberg News previously reported. That plant is likely to assemble iPhones and expected to create about 100,000 jobs.
The additional sites will bring the Apple partner’s envisioned new spending for India north of $1.2 billion, a big outlay for a Taiwanese company that traditionally assembles the vast majority of devices for Apple and other US brands from central and southern China.
Business in India
Apple suppliers such as Foxconn have ramped up business in India over the past few years thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s incentives to boost local manufacturing. Foxconn and smaller Taiwanese rival Pegatron now both operate iPhone assembly facilities in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Other states such as Karnataka have also wooed companies with quick decision-making, cutting down on red tape and throwing in subsidies.
Separately, a Foxconn subsidiary also signed an initial agreement with the southern Tamil Nadu government to set up its own components plant with an investment of Rs16 billion ($195 million), the state’s industries ministry said Monday. The project is likely to generate about 6,000 jobs.
