The return of Chinese professionals comes at a time when both Apple and its supplier Foxconn are ramping up plans to move away from China and look at India as an alternative . Significantly enough, the US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs is set to come into effect on August 1. The return of these Chinese technology professionals, who were facilitating and managing the production, has indeed triggered speculations that the production of the upcoming iPhone 17 series may be hampered. The engineers who have returned were reportedly managing assembly lines, factory design and also involved in training talents to handle tools and machines for iPhone production. New Delhi, it is gleaned, is keen that there is no disruption to iPhone production in India.
Hurdles to make in India
The geo-political situation is changing fast. Reading against this dynamic environment, a robust action plan is imperative to ensure that the Indian industry, rather the “Make-in-India” campaign, doesn’t encounter avoidable roadblocks in its quest for self-reliance. Knowledge sharing is sine qua non for making the “Make-in-India” pitch a vastly successful campaign. Many big foreign enterprises are looking at India with a sense of optimism and expectations. But they have a concern. How to get knowledge into the country? If the reported pull out of Chinese technical professionals from Foxconn is upsetting the iPhone production plans of Apple in India, other industries, especially non-leather industry, too, are facing problems in sourcing technical professionals from China, which has technology leadership position in certain areas. Visa issues are proving to be a big hurdle for these industries. And, the imbroglio over issuing visas to facilitate knowledge sharing by the Chinese technical professionals has slowed down the process of local manufacturing.
Knowledge sharing
“As businessmen, our dream is to create big factories and create more and more factories. However, knowledge sharing is a big concern. If we are able to bring that knowledge to India, all these manufacturers (read foreign) would come to India. My partner has a factory in Indonesia, and they have 36 factories all over the world. They want to come to India,” says Rafiq Ahmed, Executive Chairman of Kothari Industrial Corporation Ltd.(KICL), which is setting up a huge non-leather footwear park in Perambalur district of Tamil Nadu. “All these people have created factories in China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. But, the knowledge of Chinese technicians and machine operators are all there in China.
Visa issue
“Everybody is ready to come to India,” he adds. KICL has developed a component park. “We have signed MoUs with 22 world leading component manufacturers. They have bought land. We have also proposed a plug-and-play model. But, now, their concern is for the technical knowledge to improve,” Rafiq Ahmed says. On February 26, KICL signed up to bring Adidas. It is putting up its second factory. Many are “signing MOUs with KICL.”They are trying to come here. But, they always have a fear of buying land and running a factory. But here, we have created and brought in investment. More than US$150 million have been invested. The project is now live,” he says. Now, the issue of Visa is turning out to be very important, especially for the technical people. Though visas are issued to the Chinese technicians, the process, however, takes a long time. The opportunity cost of such delays can have a significant cost- and time-over-runs and even jeopardise a viable project. A practical approach to facilitating free flow of technical knowledge-sharing is what the industry is looking for, it appears.