Last September, news broke that India’s leading Tata Group was in talks with Wistron to set up a joint venture to assemble Apple’s iPhones in India, and in November, news broke that Tata wanted to buy Wistron’s only manufacturing plant in India for up to 50 billion rupees.
According to Bloomberg, the Tata Group is close to acquiring an iPhone factory in India. The deal would make it the first homegrown iPhone maker in India.
Two people familiar with the matter said Tata Group has been in talks with Wistron for months and hopes to complete the acquisition by the end of March. The two companies have discussed various potential partnerships, but the talks now center on Tata getting a majority stake in a joint venture. Tata would oversee the main manufacturing operations with Wistron’s support, they said. Tata aims to complete the due diligence process by March 31 so that Tata’s electronics unit can formally take over Wistron’s position in the government incentive program, one of the people said.
Wistron is one of Apple’s largest suppliers in India, and its factory is located in Karnataka in southern India.
Currently, Tata Electronics, a division of the Tata Group, is already supplying components to Apple. In September, it was reported that Tata Group was in talks with Wistron to set up a joint venture to assemble iPhones in India.
Tata Group is India’s largest group company, including 96 companies in 7 departments, operating in more than 40 countries on six continents, and its products are exported to 140 countries, involving aviation, automobiles, fast-moving consumer products, chemicals Materials, defense and aerospace, power distribution systems, engineering, finance, medical care, information, railway locomotives, real estate, steel, communications and other fields.
According to public information, Tata Group got its name from its founder, Jamshidji Tata, whose family members have almost always served as chairman of the group. The chairman of the group during the transition period is Ratan Tata.
Wistron is one of the assemblers of Apple’s iPhone SE and iPhone 6s smartphones. Later, Luxshare Precision announced the acquisition of part of Wistron’s iPhone business for US$472 million, thus becoming Apple’s first Chinese mainland OEM.
