Smallbusiness
Xiaomi’s growth has been phenomenal in India. The smartphone maker claims out of three phones sold in India, one is a Xiaomi has also been experimenting with various other products in India and is expected to launch a Mi store soon in the country.
Xiaomi Founder and CEO
“Xiaomi's India journey has been way beyond our wildest expectations. According to IDC, we are number one in online. In the last two quarters, out of three phones sold online, one is a Xiaomi phone. We have created a lot of new records in the online space - our new product Redmi Note 4 has sold more than a million phones in the past 45 days,” he told ET.
However, the Chinese smartphone maker did face challenges in India.
“Supply and manufacturing. In our latest Redmi 4A sale, we sold 2,50,000 phones in just 4 minutes. This also means a lot of users who want to buy our products could not get it and had a bad experience. So, we have already opened our second factory to ramp up manufacturing and solve supply issues so users can buy our products easily,” said Lei.
He added the biggest challenge we face is that the online market share compared to overall market share is actually rather limited. For e.g., in China, ecommerce is very established, but unfortunately the whole ecommerce market share is just 10% of goods sold in China.
Soon, Xiaomi will be launching the first of Mi Home stores in India. “We are experimenting and thinking about how we should do this in India. One key concept about the internet way of thinking is you actually need to experiment, get feedback and then iterate on the model. It's all about experimentation. If we actually test and if it works well, then Mi come can be an inspiration to India's retail economy,” Lei told ET.
Talking about future plans, Lei said, “In India, we need to first focus on how to get 50% market share in online. Currently the share in India is more than 30%.”
(Image: AP)