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6 days ago
- Business
- Scroll.in
Shein power does little to help Reliance crack e-commerce
This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology's impact outside the West. Online retail continues to elude India's richest man. The Shein India app, launched by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail in partnership with the Chinese fast-fashion giant, has struggled to gain traction in a market where Amazon and Walmart have been fighting neck-to-neck for nearly a decade. Downloads for Shein India nosedived from 50,000 a day shortly after its launch in early February to 3,311 in early April, according to AppMagic, a US-based app performance tracker. In April, when US tariffs hit China, the app saw renewed interest as it was in the news, but experts are unclear on whether this growth is sustainable. 'Unlike earlier times, now … [the] market is saturated with multiple options and offers, and user interest can quickly dwindle,' Yugal Joshi, partner at global research firm Everest Group, told Rest of World. Kushal Bhatnagar of Indian consulting firm Redseer, however, sees the late-April spike as a healthy sign, given that Reliance has yet to run paid marketing campaigns for Shein. Reliance Retail declined to respond to Rest of World 's queries about its partnership with Shein. Reliance launched Shein for India five years after the original Shein app was banned in the country over border tensions with China. But the Shein that has returned is entirely separate from Shein's global platform: rather than selling made-in-China clothes and accessories directly to consumers, Shein now operates as a technology partner, while Reliance Retail handles the heavy lifting – from sourcing and manufacturing to distribution. All consumer data is managed by the Indian company. The partnership is part of Ambani's broader effort to overhaul his retail business, whose valuation fell to $50 billion in 2025 from $125 billion in 2022. Although the company has made a push into digital platforms like JioMart, Ajio, and most recently Shein India, the bulk of its retail revenue still comes from its 18,000 physical stores. Lagging behind Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart, which together control nearly 60% of India's e-commerce market, Reliance has spent years trying to break into the sector. Between 2020 and 2025, Ambani's group acquired majority stakes in companies spanning digital services, online pharmaceuticals, and quick commerce. But the investments have yet to position Reliance as a serious challenger to Amazon and Flipkart. Analysts say the Indian behemoth hopes to leverage Shein's artificial intelligence-powered trendspotting and automated inventory systems to pursue an ambitious goal: capturing a major share of India's e-commerce market, projected to hit $345 billion by 2030. According to Kaustav Sengupta, director of insights at VisionNxt, an Indian government-funded initiative that uses AI to forecast fashion trends, such a model is likely to make good use of Reliance's humongous customer data sets: more than 476 million subscribers for its Jio telecom brand, 300 million users for e-commerce platform JioMart, and 452 million subscribers for its news and entertainment portfolio, consisting of 63 channels, a streaming service, and digital news outlets. 'With these data points, Reliance wants to now sell fashion products, so all it needs is a system where it can feed all these data points,' Sengupta told Rest of World. He said the model would be able to predict best-selling products and suggest the right prices for them. The original Shein app uses AI-driven models for intelligent warehousing and to spot customer trends before manufacturing a new product. It scales the manufacturing up or tweaks the designs based on the feedback. At any given time, the Shein website has a catalogue of more than 600,000 items. Its Indian iteration does not match up, according to reviews on the Google Play store. Several customer reviews for Reliance's Shein app are critical of higher prices and reduced options. The app's rating hovered at 2 out of 5 until February; in May, it climbed to 4.4, but reviews were still a mixed bag. As of April 25, Reliance Retail said only 12,000 products were live on Shein India, a stark contrast to the 600,000 items available on Shein's global platforms. While Shein is reportedly set to debut on the London Stock Exchange this year, Ambani's years-old promise to take Reliance Retail public remains unfulfilled. Reliance Retail, which accounts for around 30% of the conglomerate's overall business, is facing a slowdown in annual growth. Its sales rose just 7.9% in the fiscal year ending March 2025, down from 17.8% the previous year. Meanwhile, shares of rival Tata Group's retail and fashion arm, Trent, have soared by 133%. 'Reliance would have looked at reviving that momentum and riding on it, while for Shein, adding India back on its portfolio of markets could be a plus point before its proposed public listing,' Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a brand management consultancy that has worked with various global e-commerce brands including Ikea, told Rest of World. A Reliance Retail official privy to information about its fast fashion expansion plans told Rest of World the partnership with Shein also hinges on global manufacturing ambitions as the Chinese company is trying to 'source its products from other countries like India' to meet the 'additional demand that is coming from newer markets.' Reliance Retail has tapped a network of small and midsize Indian manufacturers to locally source products, and its subsidiary Nextgen Fast Fashion Limited is leading the charge. 'We need to first scale up our domestic manufacturing, before our partnership starts manufacturing for global markets. Let us see how that goes, first,' the official said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to share this information publicly. India's Gen Z population is at 377 million and counting, and their spending power is set to surpass $2 trillion by 2035, according to a 2024 report by Boston Consulting Group. Every fast-fashion retailer wants to capture this market, but it 'is very new even for Reliance', Rimjim Deka, founder of Indian fast-fashion platform Littlebox, told Rest of World. Deka said smaller brands like hers 'just see [a trend] and implement it,' which could take a large conglomerate months to do, by which time the trend may have lost relevance. Reliance's previous attempts to attract young shoppers with clothing brands like Foundry and Yousta failed to find much success. Anandita Bhuyan, who works in trend forecasting and product creation for fast-fashion clients like H&M and Myntra, told Rest of World the company has struggled to effectively leverage consumer data and target India's youth. According to the Reliance Retail official, the company is confident that if 'there are 10 existing brands, the 11th brand will also get picked up as long as there is value and there is fashion'. 'Shein already has a recall among the youth. It gives us yet another brand in our portfolio through which we can cater to the youth,' the official said. Shein was built in China on the back of more than 5,400 micro manufacturers – a scattered and loosely organised network of small and midsize factories. In January this year, on a visit to China, Deka met with manufacturers working for Shein and Temu. On the outskirts of Guangzhou, Deka saw factories set up in areas that appeared residential, with 'women sitting inside houses' making clothes. 'The tech is built in a way that somebody sitting there is able to see that, okay, next 15 days or next one month, how much I should be making … that is the kind of integration they have done,' Deka said. Deka told Rest of World this model is easier to replicate at a smaller scale. 'Me, coming from [the] supply chain industry, I understand that it is much easier for a brand like us because we are at a very smaller scale. We can still go to those people, we can still build it in a very unorganised way and then pull it off,' she said. Her company's annual net revenue is 750 million Indian rupees ($8.6 million). '[But] somebody like Reliance, they just cannot go haphazard here. … It has to be always organised,' Deka said. Shein moved its headquarters to Singapore sometime between late 2021 and early 2022, a strategic departure to distance itself from its Chinese origins and facilitate hassle-free international expansion amid the US-China trade war. India is part of Shein's wider strategy to diversify its supply chain — one that also includes a newly leased warehouse near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and efforts to establish alternative manufacturing hubs in Brazil and Turkey. But in India, Reliance needs Shein as much as Shein needs Reliance for its global pivot. According to Bloomberg, Reliance Retail is focusing on creating leaner operations to weather a wider consumption slump in the Indian economy. 'It remains to be seen whether the Reliance-Shein combine can deliver on the brand's promise with a wide range of products, fast and on-trend,' Dutta said. 'In the years that Shein has been absent, the Indian market has evolved further, competition has intensified, and past goodwill is not enough to provide sales momentum.'
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Venture funding is creating a global AI divide, even as sovereign wealth funds and tech unicorns try to bridge the gap
Venture investors may claim to have 10-year time horizons, but that future tech-scape seems to always have a U.S. bias. I started my tech reporting career at a publication cheekily called Rest of World during the early days of COVID, when the free-money era let VCs plow capital into emerging regions like South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America in record sums. That trend evaporated when high inflation hit. Though global venture investing has ticked back up, it's been tilted by massive AI deals, which are almost entirely aimed at U.S. companies. According to an April report from KPMG, the U.S. accounted for nearly 75% of global venture investment in the first quarter of 2025. I spent last week in Malaysia (still recovering from that brutal 18-hour flight to Singapore), where Fortune hosted a conference alongside a trilateral summit between the Association of Southeast Asia Nations, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and China. Unsurprisingly, AI was top of mind for the assembled governmental and economic leaders. But their perspective was one we don't usually get from the U.S. Here's the simple summary: Everyone wants AI, but they don't know if they have the capital to build it on their own terms. In the U.S., we're accustomed to hearing about some new multi-billion-dollar startup funding deal seemingly every week, but this is not a reality for most of the world's countries, let alone regions. And that's not to mention the immense energy demands needed to supply the computing power for the AI revolution. One revealing panel featured Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi, who has a dual role as the United Arab Emirates' minister of investment and the CEO of one of the country's top sovereign wealth funds, ADQ. With billions of dollars at his disposal, he's among the more influential figures in global tech, though few readers of this newsletter have likely heard of him (partly because he gives so few interviews). With its trove of sovereign wealth funds and tech-focused leadership, the UAE is one of the best-suited 'rest of world' countries to ride the AI wave. And it has been aggressively making deals, especially under the Trump administration, including a recently announced venture with OpenAI to invest likely tens of billions of dollars into new data centers. That came right after President Donald Trump visited Abu Dhabi in May and visited a new AI campus in Abu Dhabi supplied with enough energy to power all the homes in Minnesota. But, caught in the mounting geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China, Alsuwaidi acknowledged that the UAE will never be able to compete against the two superpowers when it comes to AI. He used a metaphor, saying that U.S. and Chinese firms like OpenAI and DeepSeek want to 'boil the ocean' when it comes to hoovering up data and energy to supply their models. In contrast, smaller countries like the UAE must learn to 'fry the fish,' or use AI more strategically for their own purposes (and, ostensibly, partner with the bigger players who can spread their fishing nets). It was a surprising admission from a government official with seemingly endless resources at his disposal. But it's a concept that's hotly debated alongside the rapid rise of AI—the question of sovereignty, or how a country can control and guide the technology's development, especially when it's being created by non-state companies, often in a different language and cultural context. 'Clearly, if you want to be involved in this AI race, you need to consume a lot of power and energy,' Alsuwaidi said. In a later panel, OpenAI's chief strategy officer Jason Kwon discussed his company's new initiative, AI for Countries, which will—with some clear self-interest for OpenAI—help governments build data centers, fund local startups, and create use cases for AI. (No surprise, OpenAI chose the UAE as its first partner for the project.) Kwon admitted that many countries won't have sufficient resources to supply enough energy to create their own AI iterations, be it bespoke LLMs or applications. 'We'll provide the engine, and they're going to be providing the steering,' Kwon said, referring to OpenAI's relationship with governments. Time will have to tell how that really works. Alsuwaidi did say that the UAE's fleet of sovereign wealth funds wants to invest in emerging regions, including Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, returning to those heady days of 2021 and 2022. But he added that they often cannot find infrastructure plays that make economic sense, describing the mismatch between the risk/reward in the U.S. and Europe compared to emerging regions as 'mind-boggling.' Alsuwaidi may not be your average venture investor, but it's a challenge that every VC will face as they try to envision the new AI reality, 10 years down the line. Regions like Southeast Asia clearly have as much appetite as the U.S. or Europe. But will they get the funding to satisfy it? Leo SchwartzX: @leomschwartzEmail: Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here. Nina Ajemian curated the deals section of today's newsletter. Subscribe here. In total, Fortune 500 companies represent two-thirds of U.S. GDP with $19.9 trillion in revenues, and they employ 31 million people worldwide. Last year, they combined to earn $1.87 trillion in profits, up 10% from last year—and a record in dollar terms. View the full list, read a longer overview of how it shook out this year, and learn more about the companies via the stories below. A passion for music brought Jennifer Witz to the top spot at satellite radio staple SiriusXM. Now she's tasked with ushering it into a new era dominated by podcasts and subscription services. Read more IBM was once the face of technological innovation, but the company has struggled to keep up with the speed of Silicon Valley. Can a bold AI strategy and a fast-moving CEO change its trajectory? Read more This year, Alphabet became the first company on the Fortune 500 to surpass $100 billion in profits. Take an inside look at which industries, and companies, earned the most profits on this year's list. Read more UnitedHealth Group abruptly brought back former CEO Stephen Hemsley in mid-May amid a wave of legal investigations and intense stock losses. How can the insurer get back on its feet? Read more Keurig Dr. Pepper CEO Tim Cofer has made Dr. Pepper cool again and brought a new generation of products to the company. Now, the little-known industry veteran has his eyes set on Coke-and-Pepsi levels of profitability. Read more NRG Energy is the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year, gaining 68% on the back of big acquisitions and a bet on data centers. In his own words, CEO Larry Coben explains the company's success. Read more This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
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24-05-2025
- Business
- Scroll.in
Interview: Apple's India move is about perception, Chinese dependency is reality
Apple's India move only in perception, Chinese dependency is reality This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology's impact outside the West. Apple, the world's second-most valuable company, is caught between the US, its home country, and China, its primary manufacturing base. Over the past few years, Apple has set up more production lines in Vietnam and India, and Chief Executive Tim Cook recently said most iPhones sold in the US would be made in India. The company has also pledged to buy chips from TSMC's Arizona plant and to make servers in Texas starting next year. Yet McGee, who reported on Apple for the Financial Times, argues that the company is still far from withdrawing from China. The company has invested billions of dollars in talent and equipment in China, and the country's authoritarian government now has more influence over Apple's fate than any other country, he writes. As China and the US held their closely watched trade talks, McGee spoke to Rest of World about where Apple stands. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. What is the main thrust of your book? My argument is essentially that Apple is playing the role of Prometheus handing the Chinese the gift of fire. Apple's influence on China exceeds that of the Marshall Plan's impact on Europe after World War II. Apple acknowledges that it's trained 28 million workers in China since 2008. It's greater than the labour force of California. And the figure is a decade old, but they were investing $55 billion a year in China. The Achilles heel of the company is that everything is made in China … [and] we were not putting enough attention on it. Apple has been expanding its manufacturing presence in countries like India and Vietnam. Do you think Apple is on its way to reduce its reliance on China? I think Apple wants the perception that they are moving a lot to India, that they are responding to what Donald Trump is asking for. And they want the reality of continuing to build as much as they can out of China because its capabilities there are second to none. If next year you buy an iPhone and it says 'Made in India' on the box, that phone will not be any less dependent on the China-centric supply chain than any other iPhone you have ever purchased. If for some reason something hits the fan in China, no iPhones will be made in India because all of the sub-assembly, and the years of work leading up to it, is still all taking place in China. Why is Apple so slow on diversifying out of China? Is the company worried about anything happening to its supply chains there? One is that China can make it really difficult for them. Are they going to more publicly move things to India? And say 'yep, we are rounding down our investments in China?' I quote someone saying that they need to walk out of China, but they can't run. If they run, they risk the ire of Beijing as well as the Chinese consumers. But if they go too slowly, then they remain stuck in China. So they have to find this perfect pace to exit because they can't become the poster child of de-risking from China. I have got sourcing that Apple has told China, 'OK, more stuff is going to India, but the supply chain is becoming more and more Chinese.' The rise of the 'red supply chain,' which includes companies like BYD, [electronics firm] Luxshare, [acoustic parts maker] Goertek, and [semiconductor company] Wingtech, is of geopolitical importance. Can Apple replicate its powerful supplier network in China elsewhere? I wouldn't say never, but I'm not optimistic. I think China was a once-in-a-century partner that operated at a level of investment, of speed, of political quickness that it's going to be really difficult for any other country to replicate. Things are moving to India, just way more slowly than anybody seems to understand. Apple started with zero phones made in China in 2007. By the end of the year, they had made 3 or 4 million. And by 2014, they were building about 200 million phones. A decade later [2017], the first phones were made in India. And by 2024, about 25 million phones were made in India. At best, the diversification to India has happened at one-tenth the speed that happened in China a decade earlier. Why Vietnam is so proficient at manufacturing is that they are close enough to China to be able to get all the materials and components. But if something blew up in China, again, you wouldn't be like, Oh well, thank God for doing this in Vietnam. Because in that scenario, Vietnam would be as exposed to China as anybody else is. You write that the supply chains Apple cultivated have also benefited China's homegrown tech giants. Apple is now losing market share to Chinese brands like Huawei and Xiaomi; are the Chinese tech industry and consumers ready to live without Apple? The reason why Beijing at the moment would not take any action against Apple is because they learn so much from them. For instance, the Vision Pro headset is all being assembled by Luxshare. So you can imagine it's a bunch of PhDs from Apple teaching them how to do it. I don't know that iPhone share is going to fall apart anytime soon, just because there are so many other reasons why, if you're in that ecosystem, you stick with it. But consumer loyalty is less explicit in China. So many of the applications that they use are not from the app store, but the WeChat universe. And Chinese customers have reasons for supporting a national champion. As China and the US negotiate tariffs and trade now, can Beijing use Apple as a bargaining chip? The way you phrased the question is already really revealing, right? You didn't ask, can Washington use Apple as a bargaining chip? That's a crazy thing to say, that it's America's most iconic company and it's a bargaining chip of Beijing's. Yeah, I mean, you're totally right. Beijing clearly has more of a hold on Apple's day-to-day operations than Washington does.
Business Standard
23-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Sun Pharma drops after Q4 PAT slides 19% YoY to Rs 2,1450 cr
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries declined 3.08% to Rs 1,667 after the company's consolidated net profit declined 19% to Rs 2,149.88 crore, despite of 8.5% increase in revenue from operations to Rs 12,815.58 crore in Q4 FY25 over Q4 FY24. Profit before tax (PBT) jumped 15.6% YoY to Rs 3,254.35 crore in Q4 FY25. During the quarter, EBITDA stood at Rs 3,716.1 crore (including other operating revenues), up 22.4% with resulting EBITDA margin of 28.7%. India formulations sales were Rs 4,213 crore for Q4FY25, a growth of 13.6% over Q4 last year and accounted for 32.9% of total consolidated sales for the quarter. US formulation sales were $464 million for Q4FY25, lower by 2.5% over Q4 FY24 and accounted for 31.4% of total consolidated sales for the quarter. Formulation sales in emerging markets sales were $261 million for Q4FY25, a growth of 6.3% over Q4 last year and accounted for 17.6% of total consolidated sales for the quarter. Formulation sales in Rest of World (RoW) markets were $ 200 million for Q4FY25, a growth of 2.0% over Q4 FY24 and accounted for approximately 13.5% of total consolidated sales for the quarter. During the quarter, external sales of API were at Rs 533 crore, up 28.2%. The company said that its API portfolio supports its formulation business and API customers across geographies. During the quarter, R&D expense stood at Rs 816.6 crore, or 6.4% of sales. On full year basis, the companys consolidated net profit jumped 14.1% to Rs 10,929.04 crore on 9% increase in revenue from operations to Rs 52,041.25 crore in FY25 over FY24. The pharmaceutical company stated that it has a comprehensive product offering in the US market consisting of approved ANDAs for 542 products while filings for 117 ANDAs await US FDA approval, including 33 tentative approvals. Additionally, the portfolio includes 57 approved NDAs while 13 NDAs await US FDA approval. For the quarter, 9 ANDA were filed and 1 ANDA approval was received. Dilip Shanghvi, chairman and managing director of the company said, Our businesses delivered a robust performance for the year, driven by improving market share in India and growth in Global Specialty. The near-term pipeline in Global Specialty is promising, with products such as Leqselvi and Unloxcytthe latter through our recently announced checkpoint acquisitionoffering significant improvements in patient care. We look forward to specialty becoming an increasingly important part of our business. Meanwhile, the companys board recommended a final dividend of Rs 5.50 per share with a face value of Rs 1 each for FY25, subject to approval of shareholders approval at the ensuing annual general meeting (AGM). The company has fixed the record date as Monday, 7 July 2025. If the dividend approved by shareholders, it shall be paid on or before Friday, 8 August 2025. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries is the worlds leading specialty generics company with a presence in specialty, generics and consumer healthcare products. It is the largest pharmaceutical company in India and is a leading generic company in the US as well as Global Emerging Markets.
Scroll.in
16-05-2025
- Business
- Scroll.in
Bengaluru: Foxconn factory turns rural town into real estate goldmine
This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology's impact outside the West. Foxconn's arrival is quickly changing a rural town in southern India into a real estate hot spot. Devanahalli, located on the outskirts of India's tech hub, Bengaluru, is home to Foxconn's 'Project Elephant', a 13-million-square-foot site, roughly the size of 220 football fields. The $2.5 billion facility is set to be Foxconn's second-largest factory outside China and create 40,000 jobs. The factory is part of Foxconn's broader effort to diversify supply chains amid the US-China trade war. The company plans to double its iPhone production in India to up to 30 million units. Foxconn's Devanahalli project, approved by the local government in 2023, is the biggest in an agricultural belt known for pomelos, blue grapes, and silk, among other things. Property prices in the area have risen by 35% since Foxconn's entry, according to data from property consultancy Anarock. Still, resistance persists against the wider industrial push in Devanahalli: While many farmers have come around, some continue to hold out, demanding higher compensation for their land. 'Foxconn's entry is huge for Devanahalli – arguably a pivotal moment in its transformation,' Ashwanth Sajeevan, chief executive of a data intelligence and advisory platform for Bengaluru real estate, told Rest of World. 'It's like seeding a whole new city's worth of employment in Devanahalli almost overnight. Naturally, such a scale has a cascading effect: It boosts demand for housing, it attracts ancillary industries and suppliers, and it generally puts the spotlight on the region.' Foxconn has tied up with local real estate developers to house its workforce coming from China and Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Taiwan. Developers predict an influx of tens of thousands of workers, driven not only by Project Elephant but also by Project Cheetah – a Foxconn factory for electric vehicle components, under construction nearby. Developers are marketing properties within a 10-kilometre radius of Project Elephant as 'near Foxconn' – a strategy that has paid off, with listings doubling over the past three years. According to PropPulse, some 60 residential projects, including apartments, villas, and plots, are underway within a 20-km radius. Prices range from $40,000 to nearly $700,000 (Rs 34 lakh to Rs 6 crore). Driving back from a temple visit with family in December 2023, Neethu Ramagiri saw a billboard for luxury apartments in Devanahalli. The IT professional drove in to see the property, was offered an immediate discount, and sealed the deal for a 1,760-square-foot three-bedroom apartment. The residential complex was far from the city centre, and it didn't have a metro line nearby. The sales agents, however, pointed to Foxconn's entry and nearby infrastructure projects as guarantees of future demand. 'He [the property dealer] said, 'You just invest in it and the rent is guaranteed',' Ramagiri told Rest of World. A year on, Ramagiri's tenants are three senior-level Foxconn employees from the Philippines, China and Taiwan. She said she knew at least 10 other homeowners in the residential complex who had rented their apartments to Foxconn staff. Ramagiri said she now earns Rs 36,000 ($420) in monthly rent, claiming it was well above the average rate in the area. Since Foxconn provides catered meals for its employees, the minimal wear and tear on the kitchen has been a bonus for her. Meanwhile, the value of her apartment has appreciated by about 70% since she purchased it. Almost two decades before Foxconn broke ground, Devanahalli's industrial makeover was already in the works. The inflection point came in 2008, with the opening of an international airport, which set off a wave of state-led development. The government began acquiring land and building IT, aerospace, and science parks. These zones, combined with new and improved road links and still-affordable land, turned Devanahalli into a destination for large-scale investments, attracting giants like Foxconn. Foxconn has been recruiting for its Devanahalli facility through 2024 and 2025. Another iPhone supplier, Wistron – now part of India's Tata Group – is building a 1.4-million-square-foot facility, which is expected to generate 3,000 jobs. German software giant SAP is also establishing an office in the area. Before the construction boom, food delivery platforms like Zomato did not offer services in Devanahalli because of the town's narrow, broken roads, according to real estate dealer Ashish Jha. Now, Zomato and Swiggy delivery workers are fixtures at the many eateries in the area. Amazon deliveries are smooth, too, and the e-commerce major is moving its Bengaluru office to Devanahalli by April 2026. In 2019, when Jha first started selling real estate in the industrial area, under-construction properties were priced at Rs 3,500 ($41) per square foot, he told Rest of World. That number has skyrocketed to Rs 9,500 ($105), he said. There are now more than three dozen schools, several malls, and many state-of-the-art hospitals in the region. Foxconn has tied up with real estate firm BCD Group to house its incoming workforce in Hoskote, a town adjacent to Devanahalli. In mid-2024, the electronics manufacturer signed 900 three-year residential leases with BCD to accommodate between 6,000 and 8,000 female workers, Angad Bedi, managing director of BCD Group, told Rest of World. The municipality has bolstered civic amenities, reviving old wells, installing filtered borewells, and introducing wastewater recycling initiatives to convert gray water into a potable supply. In 2018, with backing from the Gates Foundation, Devanahalli became the first in the country to implement a low-cost, low-power fecal sludge treatment system. But the shift from farming to industry hasn't been without conflict. As land transactions continue across Devanahalli, developers acknowledge that negotiations with farmers remain complex and are often drawn out. For more than two years, a group of Devanahalli farmers has been protesting over 13 villages receiving notices of acquisition from the state authority, which will affect almost 1,300 families. Last year, farmers in Devanahalli staged a protest while fencing was being set up for Foxconn's land acquisition, claiming they had not received proper compensation for their land. Government officials did not respond to Rest of World 's questions about farmer protests. Farmers remain hesitant to buy the government's job creation rhetoric tied to the rise of the tech hub. 'These promises are not very new for the villages. … It's a very good fairy tale they bring every time,' Ramesh Cheemachanahalli, a farmer leader from Devanahalli, told Rest of World. 'But what are the preparations for the jobs?'. Cheemachanahalli said the government has not equipped farmers and their children with the education and skills needed for the jobs Foxconn will bring – and beyond a handful of roles such as janitors or gatekeepers, most villagers are unemployable at the factories.
