New Delhi: Apple is executing a mega plan with its vendors to provide hostel facilities to 1,00,000 female employees across its facilities, the largest ever for any company in the country. Being built under public-private partnership mode these residential facilities are expected to be ready by the end of this financial year. Similar housing models in China and Vietnam have given good results as they not only improve efficiency but also ensure the safety of female workers.
To make this project a reality, companies in the Apple ecosystem have been working with state governments and with private sector players by all accounts this will be the largest set of hostel facilities built or leased either at individual factory sites or by an ecosystem across multiple factories in India’s industrial history. The Apple ecosystem which has become the largest blue-collar job creator in the country will directly employ 2,00,000 workers by the end financial year over 70 percent of them are likely to be women in the age group of 18-24 years.
About 80,000 of these workers are employed in the three iPhone production units of Foxconn, Pegatron both in Tamil Nadu, and Tata Electronics in Karnataka, to accommodate this unprecedented number of women workers mostly from other states Apple’s key vendor from Tata Electronics is setting up 40,000 units which are built near its twin families in Hosur in Tamil Nadu. The first factory on their premises already manufactures mechanics for iPhones and employs 15,000 workers.
Tata will soon launch the second factory which will produce iPhones at the same location and is expected to start production by the end of this year, and in its peak, will employ nearly 40,000 workers hiring has already begun at this unit. The second vendor is Salcomp which manufactures power adapters, enclosures, and magnetics for Apple, it will occupy nearly 4,000 new housing units being constructed by SPR construction in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.
Meanwhile, Foxconn Apple’s largest vendor which produces iPhones in India, has already announced of hostel facility that is nearly completion of 18,720 units built by State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu in Chennai. Apart, another facility of 18,112 units is been built by SPR City Estates Pvt. Ltd in Sriperumbudur. Foxconn employs 41,000 workers, of which nearly 35,000 are women, the model of building housing for workers is being replicated from Apple Inc.’s success in China where they have far larger factories.
