Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn on Tuesday said it was going to invest in India across verticals like manufacturing, start-ups, energy and e-commerce portals and was also looking at bringing supply chain companies and major technologies here.
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Foxconn is also part of a three-way joint venture with the Sunil Bharti Mittal-led Bharti Enterprises and Japanese multinational telecommunications firm SoftBank to invest $20 billion for setting up 20 gw solar power projects in India.
Gou, who also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier in the day, said Foxconn is in talks with billionaire Gautam Adani’s Group for electronics manufacturing facilities.
Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer by revenue, hopes to do more in India than simply assemble smartphones and laptops. Foxconn manufactures handsets for the likes of Apple, BlackBerry, Motorola, Sony and Huawei.
The Foxconn chief said he also want to participate in government programmes like Digital India, Skill India and Make in India among others.
Sources said the presentation showed that the company would establish its supply chain and the entire ecosystem ranging from software, hardware to ancillary units in the country as it prepares to develop India as a solid manufacturing and export base.
“We want to invest in clean India and for that we are in talks with Greendust. We have been having some very good initial discussions and we want to get down to the execution and rollouts of all the plans that we have”, Vincent Tong, chairman of FIH Mobile Limited, the investment arm of Foxconn, told ET.
Despite persistent queries, Gou did not reveal the planned investment, saying the numbers weren’t final yet. He, however, said no specific investment plan has been finalised yet. The two seemed to have hit off really well with Gou profusely praising Modi and his vision of India.
“They discovered they were born in the same year 1950”, sources said.
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Foxconn had to suspend operations at a facility that made Nokia phones on the outskirts of Chennai, three months after Nokia shut its factory nearby, after being caught in tax litigation with the Centre.
