Apple CEO Tim Cook coming next week to open iPhone stores in Mumbai, Delhi

Apple CEO Tim Cook is coming to India next week to open the iPhone maker’s first stores in the country at Mumbai and Delhi as the US tech giant eyes India’s fast-growing market and looks for an alternative manufacturing base outside China.

Apple announced on Tuesday that it will open its store in Mumbai on April 18 and another in New Delhi on April 20.

The trip comes seven years after the CEO’s maiden visit in 2016 and coincides with the world’s most valuable company hitting important markers: India sales of iPhones reaching all-time high and annual iPhone export from the country reaching billions of dollars. Apple is betting on India to diversify its assembly operations beyond China amid strained Beijing-Washington relations.

Cook is set to open Apple’s first India store inside an upscale mall in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC).

Two days after that, he will inaugurate the New Delhi store, in a posh mall at Saket in South Delhi. The barricades of the store lifted on Tuesday.

Apple in a blogpost on Tuesday, announced the opening of these first-ever retail stores in India. These new retail locations mark a significant expansion in India that will offer great new ways to browse, discover, and buy Apple products with exceptional service and experiences for customers, the iPhone maker said.

The company opened its Indian online store in 2020. India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market and among the fastest-growing.

Apple has sought an appointment for Tim Cook with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to sources.

The Narendra Modi government has given a big push to electronics manufacturing in the country and offered billions of dollars in productivity linked incentives to attract Apple’s manufacturing partners like Foxconn, Wistron and Pegatron Corp.

Tim Cook had in a recent Apple conference call said the company had set “a quarterly revenue record and grew very strong double digits year over year” in India.

He had also said that the country was a major focus for Apple and he was “very bullish on India.”