Apple to build hostel facilities for 100,000 women workers across India

Foxconn, Apple's largest iPhone vendor in India, is nearing completion of a hostel facility with 18,720 units in Chennai

Apple is executing a mega plan with its vendors to provide hostel facilities to 100,000 women employees across its factories, the largest ever for any company in the country.

 

Being built under public-private partnership (PPP) 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 it not just improves efficiency but also ensures safety of women 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 200,000 workers (currently it is at 175,000) by the end of this financial year. Over 70 per cent of them are likely to be women in the age group of 18-24 years.

 

And about 80,000 of these workers are employed in the three iPhone production units of Foxconn, Pegatron (both in Tamil Nadu) and Tata Electronics (Karnataka).

 

To accommodate this unprecedented number of women workers -- mostly from other states -- Apple’s key vendor Tata Electronics is setting up 40,000 units which are being built near its twin factories in Hosur in Tamil Nadu.

 

The first factory in their premises already manufactures mechanics for iPhones and employs over 15,000 workers.

 

Tata will soon launch the second factory which will produce iPhones at the same location which 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 adaptors, 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 iPhone vendor in India, has already announced a hostel facility which is nearing completion with 18,720 units built by State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) in Chennai. That apart, another facility of 18,112 units is being 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.

 

The  Shenzhen complex (called Foxconn City), for instance, houses over 420,000 workers while the ‘iPhone City’ in Zhengzhou houses 300,000 workers.

 

The need for large number of workers emanates from the fact that unlike that of Samsung smartphone factories which are highly automated, a lot of the work to assemble iPhone is done manually, a key differentiator from other electronics players.    

Paving the way  

The facilities, built in a public-private partnership model, are expected to be completed by end of FY25 

Over 70% of Apple’s workforce in India are women, mostly aged 18-24 

Apple vendors like Tata, Foxconn, and Salcomp are leading this initiative in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka 

Inspired by similar housing models in China, this move aims to boost worker safety, efficiency, and job satisfaction