New Delhi: Homegrown Tata Electronics and the Motherson Group, along with Taiwanese giant Foxconn’s India arm Yuzhan Technology, led the list of companies that received approvals as the government cleared 22 projects under the electronics components manufacturing scheme (ECMS) on Friday.
Out of the total ₹41,863 crore announced in investments, the three projects alone will account for ₹27,166 crore.
With the latest tranche, the ministry of electronics and IT (Meity) has approved a total of 46 projects, with cumulative investments reaching ₹54,567 crore.
This comes at a time when India is looking to localize the manufacturing of mobile phone enclosures—a component for which India was squarely reliant on China so far.
Mobile enclosures are the metal frames or casings on which all other components are mounted. They account for over 10% of a mobile phone’s bill of materials, thus making it a key component for adding value to a local economy.
Executives at the event to announce the investment said that work on the local projects is already underway, and will start supplying to industries as early as next fiscal year.
Job creation
Foxconn’s project is expected to create 16,210 new jobs, while Tata’s plant will create 1,500 jobs. Motherson, which marked its entry into electronics with this investment, will employ 5,741 people at its plant to set up mobile enclosure manufacturing. Their respective individual investments were not broken down at the announcement.
Dinkar Malladi, resident director and vice-president at Yuzhan Technology India, said that the company’s entry into ECM was a major move by its parent Foxconn to diversify its supply chain. “As far as components are concerned, this is the first time that a Foxconn Group entity has moved out of China. We’re excited to be here in a big way, and we’re excited to set up a lights-out factory with industry 4.0 automation, and local procurement. We’ll invest more in bringing our ecosystem to India.”
Som Dutt Mehta, chief information officer and executive vice-president at Motherson Electronic Components, added that the ECMS scheme was a key factor for the industrial group’s entry into the space. “ECMS is helping the industry boost employment in India, and raise India’s market share in the global components ecosystem. The scheme has helped us diversify into electronics manufacturing, and we’ll look to pursue more projects here,” he added.
Motherson Electronic Components is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motherson Group, and was set up in March 2023, as per an exchange notification from the company.
Friday, incidentally, marked India’s large-scale entry into mobile enclosure and also its expansion into local camera and display manufacturing.
S. Krishnan, secretary at Meity, said the decision to approve the capital-intensive segment of mobile phone enclosures was a strategic one to boost export opportunities and increase the electronics industry’s contributions to India’s gross domestic product.
“With ECMS, we’re creating export capability in high-precision mobile enclosures, which is extremely significant. We’d emphasized that anything produced under this scheme has to be export-competitive in order for India to really reap the benefits of import substitution,” Krishnan said.
“That’s the only way ECMS makes sense. Now, the capacity that gets created in enclosures is going to be a major export-oriented project, as well as catering to India itself,” Krishnan added.
Meanwhile, Dixon Technologies got approval for its ₹550 crore investment in a local assembly line for camera modules used in smartphones and other devices.
Samsung’s local display manufacturing unit will invest ₹524 crore to locally assemble Oled displays for smartphones and televisions.
Nine new printed circuit board projects were also approved on Friday, at a cumulative investment of ₹7,377 crore.
