Latest news with #AlexTravelli
Time of India
30-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Trump wants America to make iPhones. Here's how India is doing it
By Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar DEVANAHALLI: A new iPhone factory in an out-of-the-way corner of India looks like a spaceship from another planet. Foxconn , the Taiwanese company that assembles most of the world's iPhones for Apple , has landed amid the boulders and millet fields of Devanahalli. The sleek buildings rising on the 300-acre site, operational but still growing, are emerging evidence of an estimated $2.5 billion investment. This is what President Donald Trump wants Apple to do in the United States. What is happening in this part of India shows both why that sounds attractive and why it will probably not happen. In India, Apple is doubling down on a bet it placed after the COVID-19 pandemic began and before Trump's reelection. Many countries, starting with the United States, were eager to reduce their reliance on factories in China. Apple, profoundly dependent on Chinese production, was quick to act. Analysts at Counterpoint Research calculated that India had succeeded in satisfying 18% of the global demand for iPhones by early this year, two years after Foxconn started making iPhones in India. By the end of 2025, with the Devanahalli plant fully online, Foxconn is expected to be assembling between 25% and 30% of iPhones in India. This newest factory is the largest of several making Apple products in India. Its full frame is still rising from red dust. Cranes are at work above the skeletons of high-rise dormitories for female workers. But about 8,000 people are already at work on two factory floors. Soon there should be 40,000. The effects on the region are transformative. It's a field day for job seekers and landowners. And the kind of crazy-quilt supply chain of smaller industries that feeds Apple's factory towns in China is coalescing in India's heartland. Businesses are selling Foxconn the goods and services it needs to make iPhones, including tiny parts, assembly-line equipment and worker recruitment. Some of the firms are Indian; others are Taiwanese, South Korean or American. Some were already in the area, while others are setting up in India for the first time. The changes spurred by Foxconn are rippling broadly through Bengaluru, a city of 8 million people that had a start in the 20th century as home to India's first aerospace centers. But its manufacturing base was pushed aside, first by call centers and then by flashier work in microchip design and outsourced professional services. Going back to the factory floor, as they're doing in Devanahalli, is what Trump wants American workers to do. To see the changes afoot here is to understand the allure of bringing back manufacturing. Wages are rising 10% to 15% around the Foxconn plant. Businesses are quietly making deals to supply Foxconn and Apple's other contractors. A factory that makes plastic parts for bank cash machines hosted a team from Foxconn for a tour. A foundry that makes yarn-spinning machinery was hoping it might start making the metal bits Foxconn might need in its new factory. Neither Foxconn nor Apple replied to requests for comment about their operations in India. India has been working toward a breakthrough like this for a long time. Its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called hydroelectric dams, steel plants and research institutes the "temples of modern India." In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a "Make in India" policy. Since 2020, his government has committed $26 billion to subsidising strategic manufacturing goals. India's most urgent reason for developing industry is to create jobs. Unlike the United States, it does not have enough: not in services, manufacturing or anything else. Nearly half its workers are involved in farming. With India's population peaking, it needs about 10 million new jobs a year just to keep up. It also wants to achieve the kind of financial power and technological autonomy that China found as it became the factory to the world. One problem is that India's electronics factories still import the most valuable of the 1,000 components that go into a finished iPhone, like chips and camera modules. Skeptics disparage India's success with the final assembly of iPhones as "screwdriver work," complaining that too little of the devices' value is made in India. But the government, dangling subsidies, is persuading companies like Apple to source more of those parts locally. It is already getting casings, specialised glass and paints from Indian firms. Apple, which opened its first Indian stores two years ago, is required by the Indian government to source 30% of its products' value from India by 2028. Indo-MIM, an Indian company with an American-born boss, is the kind that contributes to the neighborhood forming around Apple's production and also benefits from it. At a plant near Devanahalli, in southern Karnataka state, Indo-MIM's engineers perform metal-injection moulding for hundreds of companies around the world. It makes parts for airplanes, luxury goods, medical devices and more. The company is already making jigs or brackets for use in the Foxconn plant. In addition, a "critical mass" of specialty firms means that Indo-MIM no longer needs to make many of the tools it uses to make its products, said Krishna Chivukula, its CEO. "You don't want to have to make everything yourself," he said, adding it means Indo-MIM can concentrate on what it does best. Chivukula said the workforce made Devanahalli fertile ground for factories. "The people here are very hungry," he said. "They're looking for opportunity, and then on top of that millions of them are engineers." Still, despite the surplus of engineers, companies are bringing in talent from East Asia. Prachir Singh, an analyst for Counterpoint, said it had taken 15 years to figure out what would work in China and five years to import this much of it to India. Centum is an Indian-origin contract manufacturer, like Foxconn is to Apple. Centum makes circuit boards that go into products like air-to-air missiles, forklifts and fertility scanners. Nikhil Mallavarapu, its executive director, said the company was in talks to customise testing equipment for the Foxconn factory. Newly hired engineers and other professionals are pouring into the area. Many moved hundreds of miles while others must commute hours a day to get to work. Some rise at 3:30 a.m. to make the 8 a.m. shift. But India is thick with people. A five-minute walk away, a village called Doddagollahalli looks the same as it did before Foxconn landed. Nearly all the houses clustered around a sacred grove belong to farming families growing millet, grapes and vegetables. Some villagers are renting rooms to Foxconn workers. Many more are trying to sell their land. But Sneha, who goes by a single name, has found a job on the Foxconn factory's day shift. She holds a master's degree in mathematics. She can walk home for lunch every day, a corporate lanyard swinging from her neck. It is people like Sneha, and the thousands of her new colleagues piling into her ancestral place, who make Foxconn's ambitions for India possible. Trump wants to revive the fortunes of left-behind American factory towns, but the pipeline of qualified young graduates is not there. Josh Foulger has recruited lots of motivated Indian workers like Sneha. He heads the electronics division of Zetwerk, an Indian contract manufacturer with factories in Devanahalli that sees itself as a smaller competitor to Foxconn. He said he routinely got 700 job applications a year from local tech schools. It is a matter of scale: Karnataka state alone, he pointed out, has a population half the size of Vietnam's. All of India's "states are very keen on getting manufacturing," said Foulger, who grew up in southern India and made his home in Texas before moving back to India, where he set up shop for Foxconn. India has jobs for engineers and managers and all the way down the ladder. "Manufacturing does a very democratic job" of meeting the demand for good jobs, he said.
Miami Herald
12-06-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
Boeing 787 Crash Brings Fresh Scrutiny to Plane-Maker's Safety Record
EDITORS NOTE: EDS: SUBS for complete writethru with new approach; SUBS byline; UPDATES related stories list.); (Attn: S.C.); (ART ADV: With photo.); (With: INDIA-PLANE-CRASH, INDIA-CRASH-EXPLAINER, INDIA-CRASH-SCENE, INDIA-CRASH-CAUSE); Alex Travelli and Pragati K.B. contributed reporting. Boeing suffered another setback Thursday, when a crash of one of its passenger jets in western India renewed scrutiny of the company's safety record following a yearslong quality crisis. It could take months or years to determine the cause of the crash, in which an Air India passenger plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner carrying 242 passengers and crew members, slammed into a medical college in Ahmedabad, in the Indian state of Gujarat. Manufacturing issues may ultimately have little to do with what went wrong, but the episode -- the first fatal crash involving a Dreamliner -- could still lead to more scrutiny into concerns about Boeing's production practices that go back years. "Our deepest condolences go out to the loved ones of the passengers and crew on board Air India Flight 171, as well as everyone affected in Ahmedabad," Kelly Ortberg, Boeing's chief executive, said in a statement. Ortberg also said that he had spoken with N. Chandrasekaran, the chair of Tata Group, the conglomerate that owns Air India, and offered Boeing's support. The company said it had a team ready to help with the investigation, which is being led by India's aviation regulators. Plane crashes are typically caused by multiple factors that can include such things as bird strikes, pilot error, manufacturing defects and inadequate maintenance. Early hypotheses are often ruled out during lengthy, technical crash investigations. The first Dreamliner was delivered in 2011 to All Nippon Airways, Japan's largest airline. There are more than 1,100 in service today, including nearly three dozen operated by Air India, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm. The plane involved in the crash Thursday was delivered to Air India in January 2014 and had accumulated more than 41,000 flight hours, according to Cirium. The plane had taken off or landed nearly 8,000 times over its life, a typical amount for a Dreamliner of that age. Thursday's crash comes as Boeing is still dealing with repercussions from two deadly accidents involving its 737 Max plane in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The company reached a deal with the Justice Department last month, which would spare Boeing from taking criminal responsibility for the crashes. Boeing has agreed to admit to obstructing federal oversight, pay a fine, contribute to a fund for the families of the victims and invest in safety and quality programs. The agreement, which requires the approval of a judge, was opposed by some of the families of crash victims. The airplane manufacturer has faced other prominent safety issues in recent years. In January 2024, a hole blew open on a new 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight, exposing passengers to forceful winds. Boeing told regulators in August that it would redesign the panels to better detect any malfunctions. That episode prompted widespread reforms at the company. Among them was an overhaul of senior management, including its chief executive; substantial changes in quality processes and procedures; increased regulatory scrutiny; and Boeing's purchase of a major supplier of Max bodies. The Dreamliner has been the subject of quality concerns, too. Deliveries of the plane were paused for more than a year until the summer of 2022, when the Federal Aviation Administration approved a Boeing plan to make some fixes that included filling paper-thin gaps in the plane's body and replacing certain titanium parts that were made with the wrong material. Those problems had no immediate impact on the safety of Dreamliners, Boeing said at the time. Last year, the FAA investigated claims by a Boeing engineer who claimed that the company had taken shortcuts around the time of the delivery pause in fitting together parts of the Dreamliner fuselage, or body. The whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, said that the improper procedures could cause premature damage over years of use. Boeing disputed the claim, including at a briefing last year for reporters at the factory in North Charleston, South Carolina, where the Dreamliner has been assembled for years. Two top Boeing engineers said then that the company had found no evidence to support the whistleblower's concerns after conducting exhaustive tests, inspections and analyses of the plane during its development and in recent years. One 787 airframe had been subjected to testing that put it through 165,000 "flight cycles," the equivalent pressurization and depressurization of that many flights. That figure far exceeded the plane's expected useful life, and the airframe still showed no signs of fatigue, Steve Chisholm, a vice president and the functional chief engineer for mechanical and structural engineering at Boeing, said at the briefing in South Carolina. Boeing also said then that nearly 700 Dreamliners had gone through thorough six-year maintenance checks, and eight had gone through 12-year checks. Mechanics found no signs of premature fatigue in those jets either, according to the company. Other whistleblowers have raised concerns about the South Carolina factory where the Dreamliner has been assembled for years. Among them was John Barnett, a former quality manager with almost three decades of experience at Boeing, who went public with his concerns about shoddy practices in 2019. Barnett killed himself last year after a yearslong legal battle with the company, which he accused of retaliating against him for raising his concerns. Last month, Boeing settled a lawsuit with Barnett's family concerning his death. But the Dreamliner involved in Thursday's crash predated those concerns: It was built years earlier in Seattle and delivered to Air India in 2014, according to Cirium. Ortberg, who took over as Boeing's chief executive over the summer, described 2025 as "our turnaround year" in a message to employees in April, when the company released better-than-expected quarterly financial results. At the time, the company said it had stabilized Dreamliner production at five planes per month but planned to increase that to seven later in the year. The company's shares were down about 5% in midafternoon trading Thursday. Air India, one of the country's biggest carriers, had a cluster of dangerous incidents about 15 years ago. Before Thursday's crash, the airline's last fatal crash was in August 2020. The airline, which was taken over by the Tata Group in 2022 after decades of government ownership, has been working in recent years to improve its safety record and upgrade and expand its plane fleet. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
The Print
20-05-2025
- Business
- The Print
Global media on China's balancing act & why India ‘won't benefit' from further combat with Pakistan
The New York Times says that strategically, India does not benefit from engaging in further combat with Pakistan. The 'aspiring diplomatic and economic power' is now, on the global playing field, at par with Pakistan. But the spectre of war still looms, write Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli. 'For China, India is a very important relationship, even though they're competitors. It does not want to push India further into the US orbit,' Nishank Motwani, a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is quoted as saying. New Delhi : China is walking a diplomatic tightrope—intensifying its relationship with Pakistan, while ensuring it does not push India 'too far'. That's why its officials are taking it easy, exercising restraint when it comes to the ostensible success of their defence systems in the India Pakistan face-off, report Cate Cadell and Karishma Mehrotra for The Washington Post . 'Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats, analysts and officials paint a stark picture of India's perpetual dilemma. After multiple wars and several failed attempts at solving their disputes, the problem has only grown in complexity,' reads the report. Both countries are also left with limited options, given that both have 'embraced religious nationalism', it says. With the dust yet to settle on the most recent episode of India-Pakistan tensions, another clash over Kashmir is inevitable, because the conflict-ridden state is a 'lodestone in the grand strategy' of the Pakistan army, writes C. Christine Fair in Foreign Policy. 'Pakistan's military hegemonizes the state's politics and policies, commandeering resources for itself and its myriad personnel while the state remains dependent upon regular International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailouts and other forms of international assistance,' writes Fair, a professor at Georgetown University's security studies programme. 'Ideologically and materially, the Pakistani Army needs this conflict with India to survive. As the adage goes, while most countries have armies, in Pakistan, the army has a country.' Another NYT report says the United Nations has called for an investigation of 'credible reports' that India deported Rohingya refugees by pushing them off naval vessels into the open sea. 'The idea that Rohingya refugees have been cast into the sea from naval vessels is nothing short of outrageous,' Tom Andrews, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, is quoted in the report as saying. 'I am seeking further information and testimony regarding these developments and implore the Indian government to provide a full accounting of what happened.' He also urged the Indian government to abstain from 'inhumane and life-threatening treatment of Rohingya refugees, including their repatriation into perilous conditions in Myanmar', the report says. The Indian government did not respond to NYT's request for a comment. Meanwhile, India's dreams of becoming Apple's global manufacturing hub might be impacted by US-China's hashing out of a deal, which slices Chinese tariffs from 145 percent to 30 percent, reports Nikhil Inamdar for the BBC. 'As a result, there's a chance manufacturing investment that was moving from China to India could either 'stall' or 'head back', Ajay Srivastava of Delhi-based think tank, Global Trade Research Institute (GTRI) tells Inamdar. 'India's low-cost assembly lines may survive, but value-added growth is in danger.' Although, in the long-run, there's still a 'strategic decoupling' taking place that will ultimately benefit India, the report adds. (Edited by Mannat Chugh) Also Read: Global media reports on why Trump should be cautious with 'underlying affairs' of India-Pakistan
Express Tribune
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
NYT dubs recent combat clear setback for India
Listen to article After the recent India-Pakistan's "most expansive combat in half a century", a leading American newspaper said in a news analysis on Sunday that "Strategically, the battlefield tossup was a clear setback for India." "An aspiring diplomatic and economic power, it (India) now finds itself equated with Pakistan, a smaller, weaker country that Indian officials call a rogue sponsor of terrorism," Times' correspondents — Mujib Mashal, who is of Afghan origin, and Alex Travelli — wrote in an in-depth dispatch from New Delhi. Pointing out that Indian forces did manage to inflict some damage at Pakistani air bases, the lengthy dispatch said it followed "only after losing aircraft in aerial face-offs with its longtime adversary." "The four-day clash reminded the world about India's powerlessness to resolve 78 years of conflict" with Pakistan, the Times noted. "Any act of confrontation plays into the hands of Pakistan, where friction with India has long been a lifeblood," it said, adding, "Outright military victory is nearly impossible, given the threat from both countries' nuclear arsenals". Citing Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats, analysts and officials, the dispatch said after multiple wars and several failed attempts at solving their disputes, which have shaped the subcontinent ever since Pakistan and India gained independence in 1947, the problem has only grown in complexity. "The spark is now often asymmetric.... The risk of rapid escalation has increased as both sides deploy drones and other cutting-edge weapons on a large scale for the first time," the dispatch said. "At the same time, the leadership in each country has embraced religious nationalism, and each has hardened its views of the other, making any conciliatory gesture all but impossible," the dispatch said, noting India's shift to strongman, Hindu-nationalist rule has left it boxed in whenever tensions rise, as the right-wing base of Prime Minister Narendra Modi often calls for blood. "That makes it harder to show the kind of restraint that India displayed in 2008, when terrorists killed more than 160 people in Mumbai - and to see that a war, beyond satisfying immediate political needs, could set back India's ascent."
