Xiaomi mulls setting up showroom in city

The company, which also unveiled its first Mi Home store in Bengaluru in May has ambitious plans for this year, with respect to Chennai and South India. 

Manu Jain, VP of the company, and MD of its Indian subsidiary tells us, “We are one of the youngest startups in the world. We were founded in 2010 and started selling phones in 2012. By 2014-15, we had the largest share in China and became the second most valued tech start-up globally with a valuation of $46 bn. The legendary Ratan Tata is one of our investors and he continues to be a mentor. We started operations in India in July 2014 with a four-member team. We did exactly the opposite of what everyone else was doing and sold online. Today, we are India’s second biggest brand with a market share of 14.2 per cent (online and offline), as per IDC numbers. The market share online is 40 per cent putting together all brands and channels.” 

Talking about the plans for the South, Jain says, “Chennai is one of our top five cities, revenue-wise, after Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. However, we are seeing encouraging demand for our products in Tier 2 and 3 cities such as Coimbatore, Salem, Madurai and Puducherry. We are keen on opening one flagship retail store – called a Mi Home, in Chennai. We are targeting 100 Mi homes in the next two years across India and we are hoping the offline business will contribute to 25 per cent of our revenues.” 

The brand has begun to dethrone some of the biggies in the smartphone market. This year, between the months of January and March, Xiaomi sold about 1.8 mn units of the Redmi Note 4, which is the No 1 selling brand in India. Jain explains, “We religiously focus on customer satisfaction scores. We plan on doubling our infrastructure from 225 to 500 service centres. We already have two manufacturing plants in AP.” Last year, it recorded a revenue of more than Rs 7,000 crore.