According to reports, Hon Hai Technology Group, also known as Foxconn, a Taiwanese conglomerate that manufactures electronics, plans to allocate up to USD 200 million to build an electronics component manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu.
The CEO of Foxconn Industrial Internet (FII), Brand Cheng, and other business executives met with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin and other government representatives last week to discuss the investment in the southern state, according to a report by the Reuters news agency. State officials were given a plan by Foxconn representatives to initially invest 180 to 200 million dollars in the facility, according to Reuters, which cited sources.
India Aims to Position Itself as a Semiconductor Manufacturing Hub
The Taiwan-based company plans to finish the plant by 2024, and additional investments are anticipated after that. Equipment for communication, mobile networks, and cloud computing is produced by Foxconn Industrial Internet.
The south Indian state of Karnataka announced last week that it had discussions with FII, which had agreed to put up USD 1.07 billion in a new plant, as per Entrepreneur magazine India.
To enter the Indian semiconductor market, Foxconn is additionally in talks with the state of Gujarat, which is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Young Liu, the chairman of Foxconn, will likely be available at the Gandhinagar conference that PM Modi will inaugurate on Friday. PM Modi will formally introduce Semicon India 2023 on July 28.
The incident occurs only a few weeks after Foxconn withdrew from a USD 19.5 billion chips collaborative effort with Vedanta, a company promoted by billionaire Anil Agarwal, claiming “the project wasn’t progressing fast enough.” The large Taiwanese electronics manufacturer stated that it was attempting to submit a separate application for the establishment of a semiconductor unit in India.
The high demand for chips means that the market in their region will be worth USD 80 billion by 2028, nearly four times its USD 23 billion size today. India wants to position itself as a semiconductor manufacturing hub to compete with Taiwan, as per economy magazine.
Modi’s strategy, however, has so far failed. However, none of these proposals has come to fruition. In 2021, his government started a USD 10 billion scheme for domestic manufacturing of chips, sparking interest from businesses like Foxconn and the local conglomerate Vedanta Ltd.
