Apple India Crossed ₹1 Lakh Crore And Paid Cupertino Nearly Twice What It Kept

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Apple India's revenue from operations rose 31.4 per cent to ₹1,03,853 crore in FY26 from ₹79,061 crore, crossing ₹1 lakh crore for the first time, with net profit up 66.2 per cent to ₹5,311 crore from ₹3,196 crore, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies.

Product sales drove the growth, rising 32.7 per cent to ₹99,068 crore and accounting for 95.4 per cent of operating revenue. Technical and other support services, which include AppleCare, contributed ₹4,293 crore, and income from maintenance contracts rose 26.5 per cent to ₹492 crore. Non-operating income of ₹754 crore took total income to ₹1,04,606 crore.

Cost of materials remained the largest expense at ₹78,229 crore, up 21.6 per cent and 81.3 per cent of the total. Licence fees paid to the parent company, which may cover royalty and other licensed rights, more than doubled to ₹10,374 crore from ₹4,258 crore, making them the second-largest cost head at 10.8 per cent of expenses.

Employee benefit expenses rose 13 per cent to ₹3,531 crore, including ₹1,514 crore of ESOP cost. Advertising and promotion rose 22.6 per cent to ₹1,075 crore. Depreciation and amortisation was ₹746 crore, warranty claims fell 16.1 per cent to ₹329 crore, and other overheads added ₹1,940 crore. The company paid ₹3,072 crore in taxes.

EBITDA rose 87.4 per cent to ₹8,816 crore, with margin improving to 8.49 per cent from 5.95 per cent and return on capital employed to 67 per cent from 55.6 per cent. The expense-to-revenue ratio improved to 0.93 from 0.95.

Cash and bank balances more than doubled to ₹17,418 crore as of March 2026, and current assets rose 69 per cent to ₹38,101 crore.

The headline number is the revenue. The number worth reading is eight paragraphs down the expense schedule.

Licence fees paid to the parent company went from ₹4,258 crore to ₹10,374 crore, an increase of 143.6 per cent in a year when revenue grew 31.4 per cent. The fee grew more than four times faster than the business it is charged on. It is now the second-largest cost in the company after the goods themselves, larger than employee costs, advertising, depreciation and warranties combined.

Set it against what stayed in India. Net profit was ₹5,311 crore and tax paid was ₹3,072 crore. The royalty to Cupertino was nearly double the first and roughly 3.4 times the second. Had the fee simply grown in line with revenue, pre-tax income in India would have been around ₹4,775 crore higher.

None of this is improper. Royalties for brand, technology and intellectual property are standard between a multinational and its selling subsidiaries, India has transfer pricing rules that require such payments to be at arm's length, and these arrangements are examined as a matter of routine. Apple is not doing anything unusual for a company of its kind.

What is unusual is the slope. A royalty that steps up from roughly 5.4 per cent of revenue to around 10 per cent in a single year is a repricing of the relationship, not an indexation of it. Something changed in what the Indian entity is deemed to be paying for, and the accounts do not say what.

That is the question worth putting to the company, and the one the tax authority will almost certainly put first.

A 67 per cent return on capital employed describes a business with almost nothing invested in it.

That is the point of the structure. Apple India is a distribution and support entity, not the manufacturing operation. The assembly happens at Foxconn and Tata Electronics plants that are not inside these accounts, and the intellectual property sits with the parent. What remains in this company is the margin between the transfer price it pays for finished goods and the price Indian consumers pay, minus the licence fee for the right to sell them.

Which is why the ₹17,418 crore of cash matters more than the profit. Cash more than doubled and current assets rose 69 per cent to ₹38,101 crore, on an entity that needs very little working capital. That is a large and growing pool sitting in an Indian subsidiary of a company planning considerable further investment here.

The growth rate is the part that should hold attention. India grew 31.4 per cent against low single digits for Apple globally. At that pace the India entity doubles inside three years, which would make it a meaningful share of a roughly $450 billion global business rather than a rounding error.

The open question is what happens to the licence fee as that scale arrives. Ten per cent of revenue is a defensible royalty on a business of this size. It is a far larger absolute number at ₹2 lakh crore of revenue, and the Indian tax authorities will be looking at the same arithmetic everyone else can.

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