India can develop manufacturing ecosystem faster than China: Foxconn chairman Liu

Foxconn Technology Group chairman Young Liu has backed India as an important country for the future of manufacturing, saying that the opportunities for development of electronics manufacturing and industrial chains was very huge.

Speaking to media at a group event in Taipei, Liu said that India would be able to build the ecosystem faster than China, which took 30 years, on the back of experience and new technologies such as AI.

“Some of India’s development over the past few years, everyone can see that. The time has about come for India’s turn to start to fully develop as a country. If there’s no big change, India will be a very important country in terms of manufacturing in the future,” the chairman said.

“In the past, it took more than 30 years to build an ecosystem in China. Of course, it will also take an appropriate amount of time in India, but because it has appropriate experience, the time will be shorter, so it will have many similar situations to those when China was developing but it will be different from 30 years ago. The environment is not quite the same. At that time, there was no generative AI, or even AI, but now there is AI. Can its (India’s) development be entirely inferred from part history? I don’t think its perfect to speculate from history but we feel that development of the entire ecosystem and industrial chain, and the opportunities for development in India are very huge opportunities,” Liu said.

His comments come at a time when India is attempting to position itself as an alternative manufacturing destination to China, and supplier in the global value chains, amid geo-political tensions that were leading to global companies shifting some of the manufacturing capacities out of the country. The South Asian nation is wooing global IT, electronics as well as semiconductor players, with schemes such as production linked incentive scheme and broader enabling policies which would give them a combination of talent and skill base besides a local vibrant market for sales as well as a base for exports to global markets. The initiatives appear to be attracting companies like Foxconn, with the group’s India arm having applied as one of the 40 companies – alongside HP, Dell and Lenovo – for availing the incentives under the PLI scheme for making laptops, PCs and servers.

In July this year, while addressing SemiconIndia 2023, the chairman said that he was optimistic about the direction of India's semiconductor roadmap and asserted that Taiwan would be India's most trusted and reliable partner. “IT is India and Taiwan. Let's do this together," he had said. Foxconn has been operating in India since 2005, and has been making smartphones for Xiaomi over the past couple of years. Of late, the largest contract manufacturer of iPhones in the world is already the largest maker of iPhones in India as well. Foxconn is also applying for setting up a semiconductor manufacturing plant in India.

Chairman Liu was also reported to have said in the second quarter earnings call that the company's Indian arm has achieved a turnover of close to $10 billion on an annual basis, and that there is a lot of investment potential in India. He had said Foxconn operates nine campuses in India, across Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. It intends to expand its presence through manufacturing campuses in Karnataka and Telangana.

Indian government officials said that the Foxconn chief had backed PM Modi’s Make in India and that reforms and policies in India had created huge opportunities for the development of the entire electronics manufacturing ecosystem.