Hyderabad/Chennai: Apple’s second-largest iPhone assembler Pegatron Corp. looks ready to set up its first plant in India as the company this week registered its Indian subsidiary with the corporate affairs ministry.
A firm named Pegatron Technology India Pvt. Ltd has been registered at the registrar of companies (RoC), Chennai, on 14 July 2020 as a “subsidiary of a foreign company”. Akhilesh Bansal and Chiu Tan Lin have been named as the directors of the company.
Notably, Chiu Tan Lin currently holds the position of deputy chief operating officer (COO) and Deputy GM at Pegatron Corp.
“At present, their interaction between Pegatron is at the union government level. We would welcome them for state level talks and would facilitate them to setup shop here”, said a senior bureaucrat to Etv Bharat on the condition of anonymity.
Pegatron has hired a floor of a private commercial centre on Harrington Road in Chennai. However, the office is yet to operationalise according to the commercial centre's management.
"We have allotted them 8th floor. The office space is almost ready for them to move in. The same can be customised soon after they arrive. We are expecting them to start running this place soon after their employees from overseas arrive", a senior member of the management said.
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Speaking to ETV Bharat, Industries Secretary N Muruganandam, Industries Secretary, said the state has already signed MoU with Foxconn (which is among the contractor for Apple), among others.
“The process of setting up their facility as per the MoU is underway. Ban on international travel has dampened the progress. Once the international flight services resume, things will move forward and the investments will start coming in”, he said.
As regards to Pegatron, “We are yet to enter into talks with them since their present venture has been part of the Centre's initiative.”
It is pertinent to note that Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has written to the heads of 13 multinational companies (MNCs) in the electronics sector to invest in the southern state.
On May 29, he wrote to Tim Cook, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Apple; Kim Hyun Suk, President and Chief Executive Officer, Samsung; Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon; and Enrique Lores, President and CEO of HP, among others outlining the investment attractiveness and inherent advantages of Tamil Nadu and excellent support for business and industry to further their growth and promises a customized incentive package as per their requirement.
A special investment promotion task force has been setup by the CM to identify and extend invitations to several overseas industries which are likely to exit from certain countries including China.
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Taiwanese component manufacturing company Pegatron will be the fourth partner of Apple to set up a manufacturing plant in India after Foxconn Technology Group, Wistron Corp. and Compal Electronics. The move is likely to help US-based Apple to shift a significant chunk of its iPhone production out of China to India.
Foxconn currently assembles iPhone XR in a factory in Sriperumbudur near Chennai. A report this week said it that Foxconn was planning to invest another $1 billion to expand the plant over the course of next three years.
Meanwhile, Wistron is also reportedly planning to invest an additional Rs 1,300 crore at its upcoming facility outside Bengaluru. Wistron currently assembles the older models of iPhone in India.
However, it is expected with the investments in its production plants based in India, Wistron will enhance its assembly line and produce more models of iPhone.
Interestingly, the developments come after the Indian government in April notified three schemes comprising total incentives of around Rs 48,000 crore to boost electronics manufacturing in the country.
The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes gave an electronic company the opportunity 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.
Meanwhile, Pegatron had recently announced plans to expand its production capacity outside China following an escalation in the US-China trade dispute. The company had said it planned to increase its non-China production ratio to 10-20% by next year.
Apart from the India factory, Pegatron has also rented a plant in Vietnam that will go online in early 2021. The company manufactures notebooks, desktops, motherboards, tablet devices, game consoles, LCD TVs, multimedia players, smartphones, broadband and networking devices.
(ETV Bharat Report)
