TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Shifting global supply chain demands have deepened Taiwan and India’s mutually beneficial economic partnership, India-Taipei Association Director General Manharsinh Yadav said in a recent interview with Taiwan News.
India’s ambition to become a manufacturing hub coincides with Taiwanese companies looking for the perfect location to make their products, Yadav said. “As of now, a large number of Taiwanese companies are investing in India in semiconductors and electronic manufacturing,” he said.
One major project is the 12-inch wafer fab between Taiwan’s PSMC and India’s TATA Electronics, which is being built in Dholera, Gujarat State. The cost is approximately between US$11 billion (NT$330.55 billion) and US$14 billion, “so for us, that’s a marquee project,” Yadav said.
The key electronic manufacturing project is the Foxconn factory in Devanahalli, Karnataka State, which manufactures Apple iPhones. Yadav said revenue may reach US$20 billion this year.
He said the project showcases India’s manufacturing talent and the India-Taiwan relationship. “When we come together, we can not only provide for ourselves, but we can also provide for the world.”
The director general said non-leather footwear is an important sector that is not often mentioned. Many Taiwan companies make these products in India. Yadav said the sector creates many jobs, particularly in rural India. Additionally, more than half of the employees in these companies are women.
Expanding collaboration
Yadav revealed that two national manufacturing initiatives were influenced by cooperation with Taiwan. “When we launched the Production Linked Incentive Scheme, Taiwanese companies were in our minds,” he said. They were also the largest beneficiaries of those schemes.
The PLI’s success made India consider them as partners, so when the Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme was launched, they were consulted. “Taiwanese industries provided us the feedback on what kind of incentives would be required for them to bring electronic component manufacturing back to India,” Yadav said.
To accommodate an influx of Taiwanese businesses looking to expand into South Asia, India has planned multiple industrial parks across the nation. Many of them are led by large companies such as Foxconn and TECO group, Yadav said. “These parks are not in wilderness; these parks are next to urban cities. So Taiwanese companies will find these parks to be offering world-class infrastructure,” he said.
Promising future
Looking forward, Yadav said several sectors would do “very well” in India. Electric vehicles are an emerging industry, and Taiwanese companies “need to utilize the opportunity to get in this sector in India,” he said.
Machine tools are another promising sector, Yadav said. He hoped that Taiwanese companies, particularly Taichung-based companies, would manufacture in India because they have a lot of related technology.
The director general said he was “very hopeful” about Taiwan-India economic relations. “The momentum is just building up, Yadav said. He predicted that results from bilateral cooperation would double this year. “More and more Taiwanese companies are tying up with Indian companies.”
With closer economic collaboration, people-to-people exchanges will certainly increase. This requires both sides to understand each other’s culture, the director general said. Yadav saw similarities between the Taiwanese and Indians in the way they think and in their family values. As the bilateral partnership continues, “we should appreciate each other more,” he said.
