THE NARROW ROADS to Thimjepalli village, 30 kilometres east of Hosur in Tamil Nadu, hit a dead-end on a plateau in the middle of three rocky hills where Tata Electronics Ltd. (TEL) has built its precision engineering plant. When it opened a year ago, villagers set up a dozen shops on the approach road to meet the daily needs of 10,000-odd workers, mostly women, who arrived at the plant in company buses. As business prospered, villagers realised the plant manufactures components for iPhone.
At Adibatla village near Hyderabad, trucks are moving in and out of a strategically protected zone where Tata has built a 14,000 square metre facility in joint venture (JV) with U.S. aircraft major Boeing. It manufactures aero-structures for Boeing’s AH-64 Apache helicopter.
The avionics play extends to western India as well. In Vadodara, Gujarat, Tatas are building a plant in a JV with Boeing’s rival Airbus to manufacture transport…
