By Munsif Vengattil and Praveen Paramasivam
CHENNAI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s Foxconn has signed a deal with Tamil Nadu to invest 16 billion rupees ($194 million) in a new electronic components manufacturing facility that will create 6,000 jobs, the government of the southern Indian state said on Monday.
The Foxconn Industrial Internet (FII) facility will be built in the Kancheepuram district near the state capital of Chennai, a state government source said on condition of anonymity as details are not yet public.
It will be separate from the sprawling campus near Chennai where Foxconn assembles Apple’s iPhones, they added.
“This is a major achievement for the state,” Tamil Nadu Minister for Industries TRB Rajaa said in a statement, after Foxconn Chairman Young Liu and other representatives met with state officials including its chief minister.
Liu told reporters in Tamil Nadu that Foxconn currently employs about 40,000 workers in its facility near Chennai.
Foxconn has plans to quadruple the workforce at its Tamil Nadu iPhone factory by late 2024 to spread its bets beyond China, Reuters reported last year.
Liu has been in India to attend the federal government’s semiconductor conference that ended on Sunday.
Foxconn on Monday also signed a research and innovation agreement with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the state government’s investment arm Guidance.
The partnership aims to bring more high-value tech to the state via Foxconn, the unnamed source said. “Tamil Nadu wants to move up the value chain in electronics,” they added.
Reuters reported last week that the Foxconn subsidiary was in talks with Tamil Nadu about the components investment, with the company aiming for the plant’s completion in 2024.
FII makes electronic devices, cloud service equipment and industrial robots. It was not immediately clear if the new plant would make components for iPhones or for other firms, or both.
($1 = 82.2825 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru and Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai; Additional reporting by Yi-Mou Lee; Editing by Aditya Kalra, Jamie Freed, Himani Sarkar and Alexander Smith)
