India is secretly stealing more Apple iPhone and other electronics manufacturing from China.
It's happening in an industrial area of southern India, on muddy land that was once farmland.
In Sriperumbadur, people refer to Apple as a “customer” and dare not mention the name of the company that values its secrets.
But some things are too big to hide. Two huge dormitory complexes are springing up from the earth. When completed, each building will be a tightly packed block of 13 buildings with 24 rooms per floor surrounding an L-shaped hallway. Each room, painted pink, has beds for six of his employees, all of whom are women. The two blocks will accommodate 18,720 workers each.
This is the ready-made landscape of Shenzhen and Zhengzhou, Chinese cities famous for their iPhone production capacity. No wonder.
Sriperuumbadur in Tamil Nadu is home to the growing Indian stronghold of Foxconn, the Taiwan-based company that has long played the biggest role in iPhone production. And as of 2019, about 99% of them were made in China.
India is chipping away at its dominance as part of its national manufacturing push, with many companies looking to expand beyond China. Last year, an estimated 13% of the world's iPhones were assembled in India, with about three-quarters of them manufactured in Tamil Nadu. Production in India is expected to double by next year.
But despite nearly a decade of the Make in India initiative promoted by India's powerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi, manufacturing's share of the economy has stalled. The rate is about 16%, slightly lower than it was when Mr. Modi took office in 2014, and much lower than the rates in China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea during the Asian Tigers' rise.
India is in desperate need of more skilled jobs, and factory work creates skilled jobs like no other. India overtook China last year to become the world's most populous country, and the number of working-age people is increasing rapidly. But turning this population growth into real benefits means increasing the productivity of India's workers. Half of them still rely on small-scale farming.
Tamil Nadu may point the way forward. This state of 72 million people is now succeeding in ways that India as a whole has not. The central government began subsidizing electronics manufacturing across the country in 2021, sparking a gold rush in places such as Noida, next door to New Delhi.
But for Tamil Nadu, the incentive is not an inherent temptation. TRB Raja, Tamil Nadu's industries minister, is likely to rattle off the state's inherent advantages in schools, transport and engineering graduates.
“We never compare our growth with other states in India,” he said. “We are planning for the growth of Scandinavian countries and how to overcome it.”
Mr. Raja and other supporters of Tamil Nadu are proud of the human capital, especially women, that the state has built. Many of them have formal jobs, but few do so in other states. 43 percent of all women factory workers in India work in Tamil Nadu, home to 5 percent of the country's population.
Parts of Tamil Nadu are already acting as champions for the industry. A long belt of automobile and auto parts manufacturers stretches along the coast from the capital Chennai. In the western Coimbatore valley there is a factory specializing in die casting and pump manufacturing. Tirupur has a knitwear cluster and Sivakasi has the country's largest matchstick manufacturer.
It's amazing that India is so active in luxury products like iPhones. India has never been internationally competitive in making things like T-shirts and sneakers, and its watches are cleaned by small, formerly developing countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam.
This is not the first time this century that India was expected to advance its position in high-value electronics manufacturing. Nor was it the first time that Tamil Nadu seemed like the best launching pad for it. In 2006, Finland's Nokia, then a major mobile phone company, built a large factory in the heart of the government-planned industrial park in Sriperumbudur. It was supposed to produce millions of mobile phones a year for India and other countries. Smartphones and his 2009 global financial crisis shattered that dream.
However, the roots never withered. Sriperumbudur was initially attracted to the experience of car manufacturing. Hyundai set up shop in 1996, shortly after India opened its economy to more foreign investment and the first National Development Authority was established in Tamil Nadu. Glass manufacturing and basic electrical appliances followed. After a lull, the old Nokia site has now been rebuilt by Salcomp, a local company that makes high-end chargers for companies such as Apple. Factories for more than a dozen other known and rumored Apple suppliers have sprouted up around it, along with Samsung, Dell, and most other major multinational electronics companies.
On Friday, India's Republic Day, Foxconn CEO Young Lieu was in New Delhi to receive the Padma Bhushan, the country's third highest civilian honor. . “Let us play our part for the upliftment of Indian manufacturing and society,” he said.
A thriving network of small, medium and large enterprises contributes to the success of Tamil Nadu. One of his is Sancraft Industries in Sriperumbadur. The company makes plastic molded parts for several companies that supply iPhone machines and generates approximately $5 million in revenue.
Amit Gupta, the company's founder, said Nokia had “brought the ecosystem here” and that the company's Finnish engineers had made significant contributions to ushering in global standards. Our experience working with an early client, France's Schneider Electric, taught us how to integrate our operations with recent entrants from South Korea, Taiwan, and China.
As a hub for international supply chains, Tamil Nadu is home to restaurants and grocery stores catering to Western and East Asian tastes. “It's like a miniature version of China,” said Mr. Gupta, who worked in Shenzhen 15 years ago.
There is a lot of excitement in India and abroad about the possibility of India displacing China in at least some parts of the world's supply chains. By last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared in India with Namaste on his palm and a vermilion mark on his forehead to open the country's first Apple Store.
Overall, more than 130 Fortune 500 companies do business in Tamil Nadu.
Slipper Amber's e-campus is strikingly similar. A garden-filled lot and a parking lot for dozens of white buses separate the low-lying assembly plant. Buses shuttle thousands of workers to and from their homes in villages 30 to 60 miles away.
Inside an Apple supplier's office, employees in blue smocks and surgical masks walked past rows of machines clad in white aluminum, following a path marked by yellow arrows on the floor. Low ceilings, long sightlines, and placards encouraging good behavior in English and Tamil completed the effect.
There's more. American glass maker Corning has set up a factory capable of producing Gorilla Glass screens for the iPhone, and Vietnam's Vinfast Auto has announced a $2 billion facility to make electric cars.
Mr. Rajah, the state industry minister, also doesn't stop at $1,000 smartphones. He and other officials in Tamil Nadu are trying to attract companies that make cheaper products in bulk. If other parts of the country can follow Tamil Nadu's lead, India may be able to create enough low-skilled jobs for its young and growing population.
Mr. Raja spent the first week of January luring foreign investors with plans that include a budding industrial cluster focused on non-leather footwear. In Perambalur, about 220 kilometers south of Sriperumbadur, Nike, Adidas and Crocs are just starting to roll off the line.
