Beating the monopoly of Taiwanese businesses on their own home turf, an Indian company has acquired the iPhone maker “dinosaur” to start its own empire.

Over the past few months, Tata Group (India) has been in talks with Taiwan’s Wistron Group (China) – the owner of one of the world’s leading iPhone manufacturing facilities to buy and take over the home.

It is expected that the purchase and sale will be completed by the end of March 2023. It is known that Tata will be in charge of overseeing production activities and Wistron will be the support unit.

Apple is headquartered in Cupertino, California (USA). This group has put its trust in the Indian market and started assembling iPhones in this country in 2017, through two companies Wilson and Foxconn (Taiwan, China). If this new deal between Tata and Wistron is completed, India will gradually move closer to its goal of becoming a leading manufacturing hub.

Tata aims to complete all processes by March 31 so that its Tata Electronics subsidiary can officially take over Wistron’s position and become the first Indian company to manufacture iPhones. The acquisition transaction between Tata and Wistron could amount to $600 million. However, representatives of the three companies Tata, Wistron and Apple have not yet commented on this number.

Wistron is one of three Taiwanese iPhone manufacturers in India, along with Foxconn and Pegatron Corp. In 2020, Wistron sought to diversify its business. They decided to assemble printed circuit boards (PCBs) for iPhone smartphones at their new factory in South India. Then they gradually assembled other low-cost iPhone lines here.

At the same time, now, to reduce dependence on China and limit the impact from the US-China trade conflict, Apple also considers India as a potential destination.

Wistron factory in India is more than 200,000 square meters, more than 50km east of Bangalore city. If the acquisition is successful, Tata will take over all contracts for Wistron’s eight iPhone lines, as well as 10,000 workers at the plant, including several thousand engineers. Besides, Wistron will also continue to be the service provider for iPhone in India.

To support its ambition to build a new iPhone manufacturing empire, Tata has made a plan according to a specific roadmap. They have accelerated hiring for their factory in Hosur, near the city of Bangalore, where the group makes iPhone components. The factory is located on an area of ​​hundreds of hectares. This is an advantage that allows Tata to add more iPhone production lines in the coming years.

At the same time, Tata has also announced that they will be opening 100 Apple stores across the country. The first store will open in Mumbai this quarter.

Tata is the oldest and largest privately owned enterprise in India. The group was established in 1868 and built 100 subsidiaries with annual revenue of more than 70 billion USD. Tata has a wide range of businesses from salt and tea to steel, vehicles, chemicals, IT consulting, retail and hospitality. At the same time, the group also operates an airline and Starbucks coffee in India.

Tata Consulting Services Co., Ltd under the group is currently the largest IT outsourcing company in Asia and one of the units with the highest market capitalization in India.

Over the past few years, Tata President Natarajan Chandrasekaran has stepped up efforts to focus the group on technology with a series of e-commerce initiatives and the invention of a new super app called Tata Neu. Chandrasekaran said that last year, the group was also preparing to participate in chip production.

Reference: Bloomberg