New Delhi, April 20: After registering a four-fold jump in exports of iPhones to over Rs 40,000 crore in FY23, Apple is looking at doubling or trebling its growth and investments in the country in the coming years. One of the company’s unit in Chennai, operated by Vietnam’s Foxconn Hon Hai, has already emerged as the largest in the country in a single location in any sector, employing 35,000 people on the shop floor. Overall, along with its two other contract manufacturers, Wistron and Pegatron, Apple has generated 100,000 jobs in the last two years and is confident of doubling this in the years ahead.
“I am very confident that this Apple-India partnership has a lot of headroom for investments, growth, exports and jobs – doubling and tripling over coming years,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, said.
Chandrasekhar’s optimism comes from the fact that in the first year of its operation under the production-linked incentive scheme, ie FY22, Foxconn reached a total production of over Rs 7,500 crore. In the second year of the scheme ending March 31, 2023, the factory produced iPhones worth over Rs 30,000 crore, of which nearly 50% were exported from India.
Additionally, Apple also has two other vendors, producing iPhones under the PLI scheme – Pegatron in Tamil Nadu and Wistron in Karnataka. Together, the three companies produced over Rs 60,000 crore worth of iPhones, of which nearly Rs 40,000 crore were exported in FY23. Foxconn accounted for nearly 50% of the total production of iPhones.
