What transpired during that drive was one of the most compelling investment pitches made by an Indian state in decades.
In mid-August 2024, Young Liu, chairman of the world's largest electronics manufacturer Foxconn, landed at Chennai airport in his private jet.
Tamil Nadu Industries Minister T R B Rajaa was waiting for him with a bouquet.
The Foxconn chief's destination was the inaugural function of the first mega industrial housing project in India for 18,720 women employees of Foxconn, also a supplier of Apple, at Vallam Vadagal near Chennai.
Then came the spontaneous decision of the minister himself driving the global industry doyen to the venue, which was 45 minutes away from the airport, in a Range Rover.
Photos of the two leaders travelling together went viral. However, what transpired during that drive was one of the most compelling investment pitches made by an Indian state in decades -- details of which remained undisclosed until now.
Addressing the Business Standard Tamil Nadu Round Table 2025, Rajaa revealed that the discussion ranged from doing value addition in critical minerals to enhancing storage capabilities to improving the component ecosystem.
"We might soon have very good news, hopefully, coming out of that drive," Rajaa said during a fireside chat.
"We spoke about the capabilities of Tamil Nadu, how we need to do more value addition on critical minerals, and do more on the existing capabilities to build on storage. He also spoke about how he is looking at storage in the future.
"We also spoke about going down the value chain, bringing clusters for component manufacturing to enable whatever the manufacturing is -- already you know what they manufacture," Rajaa added.
'We are eager to bring our 3+3 future industry initiative to India,' the Foxconn chief had said during his visit, adding that talks happened with Rajaa in Tamil Nadu about potential collaboration on Battery Energy Storage Systems.
According to media reports, the electronics giant has lined up plans to diversify its presence in India beyond smartphones, including areas like electric vehicles, energy, and digital health.
Later, there were reports that Foxconn is likely to open its second-largest battery plant in Tamil Nadu and is looking for land near Manalur in Tiruvallur district, about 50 km north of Chennai.
"For that manufacturing, we wanted to bring more of the components into India to increase the percentile of the components that are already available, and we have done that," Rajaa added at the Round Table, organised in association with the State Planning Commission and Guidance Tamil Nadu.
When asked in detail about how this unconventional investment pitch happened, the minister explained: "I was just wondering why that single drive went viral. In my mind, it was a very casual request. I said we have one hour.
"It was one hour with the chairman of Foxconn -- not many people get that, and I would rather have it with him. We actually removed the driver and enabled one more in the car. I took my managing director of Guidance in the car. I drove my car."
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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