Foxconn to initially invest $2 billion in India
Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronic maker for Apple, Amazon, Blackberry and Xiaomi announced that it would initially invest a sum of $2 billion in India, to enhance the manufacturing base. Terry Gou, the founder announced that Foxconn was looking at investing in India setting a time-frame of ten years. Gou also proposed to set-up around 10-12 data centres and factories in the nation by 2020.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, which trades as Foxconn Technology Group, is the world's largest electronics contract manufaturer. Terry Gou - the current Chairman, founded Foxconn in 1974 as a manufacturer of electronic components. Iconic products of Foxconn include Blackberry, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Playstation 4, Xbox One and Wii U. Foxconn's clientele icludes Acer, Cisco, HP and Microsoft among many others.
Terry Gou floated "Hon Hai" with a capital of $7500 and ten workers to make plastic parts for TV. The first major breakthrough came when he received orders for joysticks for the game "Atari".
Foxconn entered the Indian market through the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Chennai. The facility was set-up to primarily cater to the manufacturing of Nokia handsets. FIH Mobile Limited, a subsidiary of Foxconn, established three facilities for the purpose of manufacturing in Tamil Nadu. Two of these were in Sri Perambudur and the third was in Sunguvarchatram.
The Sunguvarchatram factory was momentarily shut down in 2006 as 250 workers were hospitalized due to nausea. In 2010, 300 workers in Sri Perambudur factory were arrested for a breach of labour laws by staging a strike during negotiations. By the end of December 2014, Foxconn had to put a halt to all its manufacturing bases in the nation due to various hiccups.
Due to the termination of operations in Chennai, the workers in the factory started agitating. Foxconn also officially declared 10 February as the last working day for the workers. Foxconn had to undertake a series of negotiations to resolve the conflicts among workers. Finally, a settlement for a severance package came into force after negotiations with the employee representatives and the Foxconn management.
Foxconn announced a joint venture with Adani Enterprises, which is headed by Gautam Adani. The exact details of the joint venture are yet to be made public and it is expected in the coming weeks. The proposal just stipulates an investment of $5 billion in India which would be made, with two plants being set up in Gujarat and Karnataka.
