Mumbai: Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook, who began his maiden visit to India with a visit to the famous Siddhivinayak temple here, has announced his company’s plans to set up a design and development accelerator in Bengaluru to support engineering talent and accelerate growth in India’s iOS developer community.
Mr Cook, who is on a five-day visit to India, one of the fastest growing markets for Apple products, got down to business by meeting Anant Ambani, the son of RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani at the temple. RIL’s telecom arm Jio is going to launch data-focussed telecom service this year.
Later, he met Sunil Sood, who heads the country’s second largest telco Vodafone India. “India is home to one of the most vibrant and ent-repreneurial iOS development communities in the world. With the opening of this new facility in Bengaluru, we’re giving developers access to to-ols which will help them create innovative apps for customers around the world,” he said. The accelerator is expected to open in early 2017.
Mr Cook, who visited ICICI Bank head office to hold talks with CEO Chanda Kochchar and dined with Shahrukh Khan on Wednesday, will fly to Hyderabad to open its R&D centre on Thursday morning.
Spread over 1.5 lakh sq feet, the Hyderabad facility is expected to be used as mapping centre for its applications. The servers, however, will be ba-sed in the United States.The visit was shrouded in secrecy, as Apple executives firewalled any information about the details of his visit until Tuesday.
Mr Cook is also scheduled meet Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry in Mumbai. He would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal in Delhi.
“This is a huge vote of confidence in India’s developer community and a tremendous opportunity to gain world-class design and development expertise,” said Deepinder Goyal, CEO, Zomato, New Delhi-based restaurant search and discovery platform. Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO of Snapdeal said that Apple’s expert guidance on the interface and user experience has helped us build an app that our consumers love.
