Bharat Rakshak

Fierce advocate of IDDM (indigenously designed, developed and manufactured) products, Hyderabad-based Zen Technologies are the leading player in supplying state-of-the-art Combat Training Solutions for the training of Defence & Security Forces worldwide and is a leader in providing Counter-Drone Solutions for safeguarding the borders, critical infrastructures etc. It has offices in India, UAE and USA.

New Delhi: With the stellar performance in production as well as new orders since October 2020, India's manufacturing activity continued to expand in March 2024 as the HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Index or PMI climbed to a 16-year high of 59.1 in the same month from 56.9 in the month of February this year, reflecting stronger growth of renewed job creation in the country, a private monthly survey showed on Tuesday.

Deccan Chronicle

Apple just shipped the iPhone 16 last month, but it’s already working on the manufacturing process for next year’s iPhone 17 models. And in a milestone for the company’s supply chain, India is reportedly where early production units of the base iPhone 17 will be developed.

Wayne Ma writes at The Information:

For the first time, Apple is using an Indian factory to do the early manufacturing work for the base model of next year’s iPhone 17, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation. The choice of an Indian factory for this stage of iPhone development—figuring out how to translate a prototype designed in Cupertino into a device that can be mass produced—highlights the progress Apple has made in diversifying its supply chain to India from China and its confidence in the capabilities of Indian engineers.

That’s because this work is the most challenging and resource-intensive aspect of Apple’s product development, say current and former Apple employees. Internally known as New Production Introduction or NPI, the work involves tweaking the iPhone’s design and materials and experimenting with different types of equipment and manufacturing processes to ensure that millions of iPhones can be produced a day across different locations with minimal defects. The majority of this development typically takes place between October and May.

Ma notes that this shift only applies to the base model iPhone 17.

Apple will still perform early manufacturing and testing of the iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, and highly anticipated iPhone 17 Air in China.

Apple Inc.’s iPhone exports from India jumped by a third in the six months through September, underscoring its push to expand manufacturing in the country and reduce dependence on China.

The US company exported nearly $6 billion of India-made iPhones, an increase of a third in value terms from a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named as the information is private. That puts annual exports on track to surpass the about $10 billion of fiscal 2024.

Three of Apple’s suppliers — Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp., and homegrown Tata Electronics — assemble iPhones in southern India. Foxconn’s local unit, based on the outskirts of Chennai, is the top supplier in India and accounts for half of the country’s iPhone exports.

Salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group’s electronics manufacturing arm exported about $1.7 billion in iPhones from its factory in Karnataka state from April to September, the people said. Tata acquired this unit from Wistron Corp. last year, becoming the first Indian assembler of Apple’s bestselling product.

Vayutuvan wrote: ↑20 Apr 2025 01:42 Rahul Bajaj wrote this article in 2020. He is 100% correct about how the IT industry sucked the air out of Indian manufacturing. I was in Pune in 1999 and started a company there for testing of CAD/CAM/CAE software. We wanted to hire BTech, MTech, and PhDs in Mechanical Engg. It was hard to find folks who would work in their major. I have a lot of stories to tell but not here.

ernest wrote: ↑20 Apr 2025 19:02

Vayutuvan wrote: ↑20 Apr 2025 01:42 Rahul Bajaj wrote this article in 2020. He is 100% correct about how the IT industry sucked the air out of Indian manufacturing. I was in Pune in 1999 and started a company there for testing of CAD/CAM/CAE software. We wanted to hire BTech, MTech, and PhDs in Mechanical Engg. It was hard to find folks who would work in their major. I have a lot of stories to tell but not here.

More than IT/services, I worry about the government jobs, for which students waste their early 20s, and then work at 20% productivity.

The railway workshops in Jamalpur in Bengal and Ajmer in Rajputana were established in 1862 to maintain the trains. The British were surprised when their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives, writes Shashi Tharoor in his book "Inglorious Empire".

"Their success increasingly alarmed the British, since the Indian locomotives were just as good, and a great deal cheaper, than the British-made ones. In 1912, therefore, the British passed an act of parliament explicitly making it impossible for Indian workshops to design and manufacture locomotives.”