In Mumbai, Tim Cook inaugurates Apple's 1st India store: 'The passion is incredible'

Apple chief executive officer (CEO) Tim Cook on Tuesday (18) launched the company's first retail store in India in Mumbai, the country's financial capital.

Videos showed him waving to customers and opening the store's doors as employees cheered. He also greeted the customers who visited the store and posed with some for selfies.

Cook also tweeted about the event in Mumbai, saying, "The energy, creativity, and passion in Mumbai is incredible! We are so excited to open Apple BKC — our first store in India."

On Thursday (20), Cook will attend the opening of another Apple store in New Delhi, the national capital.

According to reports, people from all over India arrived in Mumbai to take part in the opening event, which also featured cultural programmes.

Till now, Apple products in India have been available either online or through resellers.

The new stores in India come at a time when the iPhone maker is making efforts to deepen its retail push in the South Asian nation, which is also the world's second-largest market for smartphones.

India is also fast rising as a manufacturing base for the iPhone as the US company diversifies its supply chains away from China which currently has a sour relation with America. India presently accounts for five per cent of total production of iPhones.

BBC cited experts as saying that while the new stores are an important step towards branding, they will not see an immediate impact on the sales of Apple in India.

Others, on the other hand, feel that it is a good time for Apple to invest in India's rising "premium smartphone" market.

"When you launch an Apple store you're basically giving a premium experience to your premium consumers. It might not pull up sales but it definitely pulls more people into the Apple ecosystem," technology analyst Navkendar Singh was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Apple had long planned to open physical retail stores in India but they were disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cook's current visit to India is his first in seven years. He last visited it in 2016 when Apple had just started scaling up operations in the country.

On Monday (17), the Apple CEO shared a picture of himself eating 'vada pav', a popular Mumbai snack, with Indian actress Madhuri Dixit. He called it "delicious".

He is also expected to meet prime minister Narendra Modi and India's deputy information technology minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar as part of his latest visit.