Apple will pay more attention to India as a growing market as the tech giant restructures the management of its international businesses, reported Bloomberg.

This shift will mark the first time India becomes its own sales region for Apple, which has seen a demand surge in the country, said the report, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The change followed the retirement of Apple vice-president Hugues Asseman, who was in charge of India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, eastern Europe and Africa, and the promotion of the company’s India head, Ashish Chowdhary, who will now report directly to Michael Fenger, Apple’s head of product sales, the report said.

Cupertino, California-based Apple sells its devices through online channels in India, and is yet to open its own retail outlets in the country. In an investors’ call after its quarterly results announcement last month, CEO Tim Cook said Apple will “soon bring” its retail stores to India.

Explaining the strategy, Cook said Apple is, “in essence, taking what we learned in China years ago and how we scale to China and bringing that to bear” in India, and that it is putting “a lot of emphasis on the market”.

In the December quarter, Apple’s global sales fell 5%, but its revenue from India was its highest ever and grew in “strong double digits year on year”.

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Apart from playing a key role in its sales strategy, India is also eyeing a bigger slice of Apple’s production pie as the company looks to move away from China, where its manufacturing partner Foxconn operates the world’s largest iPhone plant. Production at the facility was disrupted in November after violent protests broke out, triggered by a COVID-19 outbreak that had forced the employees to live on-site for weeks.

Currently, three Taiwanese companies—Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron—make the iPhone in India, though the country accounts for less than 5% of Apple’s global production.

Last week, Foxconn signed a memorandum of understating with the Telangana government for setting up a plant in Hyderabad that is expected to create more than 100,000 jobs over 10 years.