With Wistron Deal, Tata to Become First Indian Co to Make iPhones

The manufacturing arm of the Tata Group, Tata Electronics Pvt Ltd (TEPL), is purchasing the Wistron subsidiary in India for $125 million (1,000 crore). To produce Apple iPhones will make it the first Indian company to do so.

On Friday, the board of directors for Wistron Corp, headquartered in Taipei, gave the company's consent to "sign the share purchase agreement with TEPL for the sale of its 100% indirect ownership in Wistron Info Comm Manufacturing (India) Pvt. Ltd (WMMI). It said in a statement that the projected transaction price was $125 million (about NTD3.89 billion).

Ashwini Vaishnaw, India's minister for information technology, tweeted, "Made in India iPhones... by Tata."

Minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar told ET that the purchase of Wistron will spark the next cycle of investment in the Indian electronics manufacturing ecosystem and would be a symbol of the maturation of the country's contract manufacturing enterprises. "I think Tata's entry definitely signals that the Indian EMS (electronic manufacturing services) now has (now) a giant Indian company which does manufacturing for global brands (in the) present and is maturing now," he said.

With the acquisition of Wistron's facilities, companies like Tata, who can now specialize in both high-volume, low-margin products and low-volume, high-margin products, will help catalyze the electronics ecosystem, according to Chandrasekhar.

On November 30 of last year, ET reported that TEPL was in talks to purchase Wistron's factories. TEPL is currently one of Apple's component suppliers in India. Wistron is one of the three biggest vendors for Apple in India.

Located in India's Kolar industrial district, Wistron's plant currently employs between 14,000 and 15,000. It has four assembly lines dedicated to making the iPhone 14. One factory is closed in Peenya, Bengaluru, and another is used to service Apple goods. A second factory for the firm was scheduled to open in Kolar by the end of November, with production starting in January of 2024.

Tata Sons owns 100 percent of TEPL. In an effort to capitalize on the geopolitical reaction against China and entice smartphone firms like Apple to alternative production locations in India, group chairman N Chandrasekaran established the company to drive the group's goals to become a scaled mobile phone and component contract maker.

The Tata Group did not respond to ET’s queries.

Significant progress has been made in India over the past five years toward developing an iPhone manufacturing environment. Foxconn's 2017 iPhone SE was the first iPhone to be manufactured in India. In the years following, Apple's three contract manufacturers (Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron) produced and shipped all of the newest versions of Apple products.