Tyler Media, the Seoul-based intellectual digital media studio behind the flagship geopolitical analysis channel One Big World Show (1BWS), released an analytical episode on October 5 titled "The Harsh Reality of India Where Companies Entering Blindly for Cheap Labor Retreat," featuring Nepalese media personality Sujan Shakya as special presenter. The broadcast challenges the mainstream "China Plus One" narrative, examining the structural, regulatory, and cultural traps awaiting global corporations in India while contrasting the divergent outcomes of major South Korean industrial players.
Leading the broadcast, Shakya notes that with China facing economic headwinds and U.S. trade pressure, multinational corporations have rushed toward India—now the world's most populous nation at over 1.4 billion people, with more than 40 percent of its population under age 25 and a median age of just 28 compared to 38 in the United States and 39 in China. Apple, through Foxconn and the Tata Group, already assembles roughly 25 percent of global iPhone volume in India as of 2025. However, the episode warns that equating demographic youth with cheap, ready-made factory labor is a statistical illusion: India's labor force participation rate stands at roughly 55 percent compared to over 75 percent in China, leaving a severe shortage of skilled industrial workers. Furthermore, unlike China's centrally mandated infrastructure, India's fragmented federal system creates administrative friction across sea, rail, and road networks, limiting Indian freight trucks to 250–300 kilometers per day compared to over 500 kilometers in China.
The episode highlights how the Indian government's "Make in India" policy actively rejects simple screw-driver assembly. By imposing 5 to 15 percent tariffs not only on finished goods but also on imported core components, New Delhi forces multinational companies to transplant their entire manufacturing ecosystem—from semiconductor design to hardware fabrication—onto Indian soil. Companies that ignore India's labor laws and cultural nuances face severe repercussions, exemplified by Taiwanese iPhone assembler Wistron. After entering India in 2017, Wistron applied authoritarian mainland-style overtime practices and neglected wage arrears among third-party staffing agencies that managed over 90 percent of its workforce. In December 2020, thousands of workers rioted at Wistron's Bengaluru plant, causing an estimated 4.37 billion rupees (approx. 64.8 billion KRW) in damages and leading to 149 arrests, before Wistron ultimately sold the facility to India's Tata Group and exited the country in 2023.
For South Korean industry, Shakya contrasts two landmark corporate cases. In 2005, South Korean steelmaker POSCO announced a $12 billion integrated steel mill in Odisha—then the largest foreign direct investment in Indian history. Despite central government backing and state-designated land, environmental clearances alone dragged on for over eight years amid fierce local protests and NGO opposition, forcing POSCO to return the land in 2017 after 12 years without breaking ground. Conversely, Hyundai Motor Company, which entered India in 1996 and spent nearly three decades building local roots, treated India as a core domestic market rather than a low-cost subcontracting base. By co-developing local electric vehicle (EV) and battery ecosystems in alignment with Make in India and executing a record-breaking $3 billion IPO on the Indian stock market in 2024, Hyundai turned Indian citizens into shareholders and achieved deep societal integration. Meanwhile, trapped between U.S. threats of 35 percent tariffs on Chinese electronics and Beijing's quiet customs delays on precision equipment and engineer visas bound for India, global firms also face lingering bureaucratic friction even inside India's tax-friendly GIFT City financial zone.
"India firmly refuses to be a mere substitute for China; instead, it is evolving into a formidable rule-maker leveraging its 1.4-billion-consumer domestic market," said Sujan Shakya, special presenter of the episode. "Corporations chasing short-term arbitrage through cheap wages or tax breaks will inevitably retreat. India only opens its doors to partners willing to build local ecosystems from the ground up." "As U.S.-China supply chain decoupling accelerates, many South Korean enterprises view India as a plug-and-play manufacturing alternative, yet India operates on legal and federal dynamics fundamentally different from the East Asian developmental state model," said Tyler Rasch, Founder and CEO of Tyler Media. "Capturing real strategic leverage in India requires moving beyond short-term cost reduction and embedding South Korean technology and capital directly into India's domestic value chains and capital markets."