The 'Un-Foxconn' CEO

WHY SUNIL VACHANI DOESN'T WANT DIXON TO ADOPT THE ELECTRONICS CONTRACT MANUFACTURING GIANT'S PLAYBOOK.

- BY V. KESHAVDEV

IT’S PAST LUNCH HOUR at Dixon Technologies' factory complex at Sector 68 in Noida, which is home to 14 of the company’s 24 manufacturing units. An overcast sky only accentuates the grey contours of the multi-storey unit. As we make our way through the lift to the shop floor, security guards scan us with handheld metal detectors before we're escorted in by the floor supervisor.

Inside the plant, it feels like a traditional factory built purely for precision and productivity: metal detectors, conveyor belts running like parallel highways, workers in anti-static coats bending over circuit boards, robotic arms moving with machine precision. On one side of the shop floor, digital dashboards track metrics in real time: yield rates, line efficiency, and component usage. That perfect synchronicity of humans and machines at scale is what has come to define the biggest Indian electronics manufacturing services company—invisible to consumers, yet omnipresent in their homes and hands.

What was supposed to be an interaction at the factory—with the man behind the machines—is now taking place at The Oberoi in the heart of Delhi, as Sunil Vachani, the founder of Dixon, has a last-minute meeting in the corridors of power.

Meeting policymakers may be out of the ordinary for other business leaders but for Vachani, the consultations go far beyond customary calls: they carry deep business implications. Over the years, Vachani has emerged as the poster boy of India’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, designed to kickstart manufacturing in a $4 trillion services-oriented economy. While Foxconn CEO and chairman Young Liu was honoured with the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian award, for propelling India’s industrial ambitions through Apple, the 56-year-old scion of Dixon has quietly carved out a place for himself as the silent protagonist of India’s electronics manufacturing story.