Apple vendors in India create 1 lakh jobs in 19 months under PLI scheme, says report

Apple is the first company to export over $1 billion worth of iPhones within a month in December 2022.

Tech giant Apple Inc has become the single largest creator of jobs in the electronics sector after having generated one lakh direct jobs in the past 19 months, according to a report by Business Standard.

They have been created by Apple’s vendors in India and their ecosystem of component suppliers who help in the manufacture of iPhones under the government’s smartphone Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, the report added.

The vast majority of these new jobs have been created in the past 19 months since the PLI scheme came into effect in August 2021.

Foxconn Hon Hai, Pegatron and Wistron, the three vendors who assemble the iPhone, have collectively generated 60 percent of the new jobs. This exceeds their second-year commitment to generate news jobs under the scheme by roughly 7,000 new jobs.

The remaining 40 percent jobs have been created by Apple’s entire ecosystem which includes suppliers of components and chargers. These suppliers have generated 40,000 additional jobs and include names such as Tata Electronics, Salcomp, Avary, Foxlink. Sunwoda, and Jabil, the report added.

The data is based on the three vendors and the companies in the Apple ecosystem who are required to file the employment numbers on a regular basis with government authorities.

What do the numbers say?

Out of the one lakh jobs, Tamil Nadu-based Foxconn Hon Hai, which exclusively makes iPhones, has created  over 35,500 or more than a third.
Starting its production only this financial year, Pegatron, which is also in Tamil Nadu, has become the second largest employer with 14,000 jobs. Wistron, located in Karnataka, has generated 12,800 jobs.

An Apple Inc spokesperson did not respond to a query by Business Standard (BS) on these employment numbers.

In the supply chain, sources told BS that Tatas Electronics, Apple Inc’s key component supplier for mechanical parts, has employed substantial numbers of employees.

The other contributors are Salcomp with over 11,000 employees, along with Jabil, Foxlink, and Sunwoda, the report said.

According to a press release issued in October 2020, it estimated that two lakh direct jobs would be created in five years under the smartphone PLI scheme.

The government has also estimated that for every direct job, nearly three times the number of indirect jobs are created in electronics manufacturing.
By this calculation, the total number of direct and indirect jobs created by the Apple ecosystem would be around three lakh.

According to the India Cellular and Electronics Association, the total number of jobs created directly and indirectly by mobile device manufacturers and their suppliers is around two million over seven years.

Apple is the first company to export over $1 billion worth of iPhones within a month in December 2022. It had clocked over Rs 30,000 crore of exports in the nine-month period of April-December 2022 which accounted for around 40 percent of the total smartphone exports in value from the country, the report said.