Tata Group taking over iPhone assembly plant in India will be good, says top executive

Tata Group's success in taking over the iPhone assembly plant in South India will work in favour of the country's ambitions to become an electronics manufacturing hub, said N Ganapathy Subramaniam, operating chief at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

The conglomerate has been in talks with Apple's Taiwanese supplier Wistron for months. The deal to set up an assembly factory near Bangalore might be closed by the end of March. Tata Group has been steadily expanding its work in the tech sector and the Indian government is backing it with the dream of challenging China's dominance in the field.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, he said he is not directly involved in the project but "it should be really good for India because this is going to create an opportunity in India to manufacture electronics and microelectronics."

TCS is Asia's biggest outsourcer. "The company has enough cash to look at mergers and acquisitions and other strategic opportunities in areas including cybersecurity and cloud solutions," said the executive.

Subramaniam, who also happens to be the brother of Tata Group Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said the company is in a broad and mixed environment. "But given what we have achieved as momentum and then the qualified pipeline that I see, I think it looks alright." TCS shares fell as much as 2.7% on Tuesday after the company reported a net profit of Rs 108.5 billion in the three months through December and missed the average analyst estimate of Rs 110.85 billion.