A division of Taiwan-based Foxconn Hon Hai Technology, announced on Monday that it will invest $1.6 billion to construct a facility in India.

The well-known Apple supplier Foxconn said that Foxconn Singapore, paid $1.54 billion for 12.83 billion shares of Foxconn Hon Hai Technology India Mega Development.

The investment plan was disclosed by the company in a Taiwanese stock exchange filing, but no additional details was given.

Liu Young-way, the chairman of the company, stated that “several billion dollars in investment is only a beginning” and expressed his view of India’s potential in an August earnings briefing.

Foxconn in India

Foxconn has big intentions to increase its footprint in India. Within the next year, the largest electronics contract maker in the world plans to quadruple both its personnel and its investment in the nation. This calculated action fits into Foxconn’s larger plan to diversify its production sources outside of China, as reported by Business Today in September.

With thousands of employees, Foxconn already runs a substantial iPhone manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu. Furthermore, it had stated that it’s $600 million investment in Karnataka further demonstrates the company’s dedication to India’s rapidly developing industrial and technology sectors.

The revelation, which was made late on Monday in a Taiwanese exchange filing, just stated that the investment was for “operational needs” and provided no other information. The location and type of the new facilities were not disclosed by a company representative.

The announcement coincides with increasing tensions between Beijing and Washington as Hon Hai, formerly known as Foxconn Technology Group, and other Taiwanese contract manufacturers of electronics, continue to expand their businesses outside of China.

The Karnataka state government in India declared in August that Foxconn intended to invest US$600 million in two component facilities located in the state’s southwest. At the time, the government stated that Foxconn will work with Applied Materials to manage a semiconductor equipment manufacturing factory and a plant that will manufacture mechanical enclosures for iPhones.

As previously reported by Bloomberg News, those two projects are situated atop a US$700 million facility that Foxconn plans to construct on a 300-acre (121 hectare) plot of land near the airport in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka. Most likely, iPhones are assembled at that site.

Apple and Foxconn

Apple is Foxconn’s primary source of revenue, accounting for about half of it. For a number of years, the company has been producing iPhones and other goods in India, including the most recent iPhone 15. A company’s spokesperson in India stated on LinkedIn in September that the Taiwanese corporation intends to expand the scale of its operations in the nation of South Asia.

In an attempt to close the gap between its operations in India and its primary manufacturing base in China, Apple Inc. is starting manufacture of the next-generation iPhone 15 in Tamil Nadu’s announced earlier in August.

As the business looks to quickly raise the volume of new iPhones arriving from India, a Foxconn Technology Group plant in Sriperumbudur is getting ready to provide the newest gadgets just weeks after they start shipping from facilities in China, according to people familiar with the subject.

The extent to which the iPhone 15 will be produced in India will be determined by the ease with which the production lines at the Foxconn facility outside of Chennai can ramp up and the readily available components, which are primarily imported.

Apple, which debuted its first retail locations in the nation in April, now sees India’s rapidly expanding market as a retail potential as well as a significant long-term source of manufacturing for its devices. Although Apple hasn’t released exact figures, iPhone sales in India increased by double digits to a record high in the quarter ending in June.

Following his discussion with Indian PM Modi during his April visit to India, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared the company is “committed to growing and investing across the country.”