Tata Sons seeks up to $1 billion funding for phone plant

Mumbai: Tata Sons is seeking up to $1 billion in overseas loans to set up a globally scalable mobile phone and component contract manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu that will start by making iPhone parts, said people aware of the plan.

This is part of group chairman N Chandrasekaran’s bid to woo mobile makers such as Apple to alternative production sites in India as they seek to diversify out of China, they said.

Tata Electronics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, will lead the initiative, beginning with iPhone casings and eventually partnering other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in South Korea and Japan as part of a “larger electronics ecosystem,” said one of the persons.