After Mumbai, Apple Opens Its Second Outlet In Delhi

A day after Apple CEO Tim Cook inaugurated India’s first store in Mumbai, the boss of the company threw open the gates of its second store in the country in Delhi’s Saket.

Cook inaugurated the Saket store at the Select City Mall amid the crowd of hundreds of eager shoppers lined up since early morning. Cook was seen welcoming customers as employees cheered at the company’s second retail outlet.

The Apple Store in Delhi is a little smaller than the one in Mumbai. However, the store follows the same retail format as any other Apple store around the world. The Delhi store will have spaces for classes and meetings, new screens and hardware, and “Genius groves,” a tree-lined area where the “Genuis Bar” once was. It will have buyers check out the latest products including the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV lineups, as well as accessories like the AirTag.

To witness the grand opening of the retail store, people started lining up outside the store as early as 7:30 am, with queues going all the way to the outside of the mall. There were ‘Dhols’ playing inside the mall and a lot of people got their old products to get them signed by the Apple boss.

Tim Cook finally opened the doors at 10 am and met the first bunch of customers who went inside. He welcomed them with a namaste but the emotions were on full display when a bunch of these fans went on to touch Cook's feet, showing what it truly meant for them to be there.

Earlier this week, Cook was in Mumbai to open the company’s first Apple retail store in India’s financial capital. Later, he flew down to Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Apple is committed to growing and investing across the country,” Cook said in a Tweet after meeting Modi on Wednesday, hours ahead of the opening of the Delhi store.

The opening of two back-to-back stores comes at a time when Apple is deepening its reach in India, which is home to 1.4 billion people. Apple makes some of the world’s best-selling products such as the iPhone and Apple Watch and the company wants to expand both its manufacturing base and retail presence in India.

Even though Apple is a small player in India’s lucrative mobile phone market, where 95 per cent of smartphones run on Google’s Android operating system, the company hopes to change that in the future. Its iPhone is an aspirational product in India, and Cupertino hopes it has a real chance to expand the market for its products in the premium segment.

India is home to a young, working-class population who are willing to pay more for phones and laptops. This is exactly the reason why Apple opened its first two stores in Mumbai and Delhi, the two wealthiest cities of India. Apple made $6 billion in revenue in the year through to March, growing 50 per cent, Bloomberg recently reported. The company shipped around 6.5 million iPhones in India in 2022, up from 4.8 million in 2021, according to IDC.