The Tata group is looking to set up a second assembly plant for manufacturing iPhones in India. Apple is reportedly aiming to build capacity to make more than 50 million iPhones in India over the next 2-3 years.

According to a report from Bloomberg, there is a plan to construct a factory at Hosur in Tamil Nadu with the facility likely to have 20 assembly lines and employ 50,000. There is, however, no official confirmation from either Apple or the Tatas.

Earlier in October, Wistron Corp had announced the sale of a 100 per cent stake in Wistron InfoComm Manufacturing (India) Private Limited to Tata Electronics Private Limited for around $125 million, making the latter the first domestic iPhone maker in the country.

The new plant is expected to bolster Apple’s efforts to localise its supply chain and strengthen its partnership with the Tatas, which now operates Wistron’s plant in Karnataka.

Apple is diversifying its operations away from China. India is a major focus market where it has recorded a strong double digit growth in revenue during the September quarter. While Apple has already expanded its retail presence in the country, the Tata group, which has a presence in electronics retail through Croma, is reportedly looking to have exclusive Apple stores in the country.

Apple’s key suppliers such as Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp are ramping up in India. That has helped Apple to assemble over $7 billion of iPhones in India in the previous fiscal year, increasing the country’s share of the device’s production to about 7 per cent.

Earlier in January, commerce minister Piyush Goyal had said Apple has set its sights on increasing the share of device production from India to 25 per cent.

According to Bloomberg, the new plant is set to be mid-sized among iPhone factories globally. It would likely be bigger than the one Tata acquired from Wistron, which employs more than 10,000 people, and smaller than Foxconn’s biggest China facilities, which employ hundreds of thousands.