IT Correspondent
New Delhi, July 18:
Days after reports of Apple supplier “Foxconn” planning to expand its facilities in India, another iPhone manufacturer “Pegatron” is also planning to set up its plant in Chennai, the reports stated.
The product lines of Pegatron, a Taipei-based electronic manufacturing behemoth, include notebooks, netbook computers, desktop computers, game consoles, handheld devices, motherboards, video cards, LCD TVs, as well as broadband communication products such as smartphones, set-top boxes and cable modems.
“Pegatron” will be the fourth partner of Apple to set its footprint in India after “Foxconn”, “Wistron”, and “Compal Electronics”. At present, only “Foxconn” and “Wistron” assemble iPhones in India.
“Foxconn”, the Taiwan-based company has registered its India subsidiary in Chennai and is planning to expand its base in India. It assembles iPhones in a factory in Sriperumbudur near Chennai and has plans to invest $1 billion in its plant, located at about 50 kilometres from Chennai. The expansion is expected to create over 6,000 skilled jobs. It also has a plant in Andhra Pradesh’s “ Sri City” where it manufactures smart phones for Chinese company “Xiaomi Corp” and others.
Another Taiwanese manufacturer “Wistron”, which makes for Apple exclusively, already has a factory in Bangalore (Karnataka). “Winston” has also announced its expansion plan with an initial investment of Rs 2,000 crore and increase the manpower up to 20,000 (10 times compared to existing capacity).
The plans by electronic manufacturing giants, is in response to a Rs 41,000-crore productivity linked incentive (PLA) package (Atmanirbhar), recently announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to make India a major production hub for exporting mobile phones. Under PLI, an electronic company has the potential to get an incentive of around Rs 7,500 crore if it scales up production to worth about Rs 1.5 lakh crore over next five years. The firms can apply till 31 July and the announcement of the selected companies will be made by early August.
Five global and five local companies will be selected initially for the scheme. “Foxconn” and “Winstron” are said to have applied under PLI. Besides, other major global players in the mobile manufacturing including South Korean “Samsung” and Singapore-based “Flextronics” are also expected to submit their applications for the PLI scheme soon. Also Indian companies like “Lava”, “Dixon Technologies” and “Karbonn” have also applied for the scheme so far.
The government expects to generate manufacturing revenue potential of Rs 10 lakh crore and create direct and indirect jobs for 20 lakh people by 2025 through these schemes. India is looking as a base to manufacture and export, essentially diversifying its production out of China.
