We have established our business for the long term: Manu Kumar Jain

Interview with general manager and head of India operations, Xiaomi Corp

The story of the world's fourth largest mobile handset company by sales, China's Xiaomi, is impressive. The company entered India in July 2014 and multiplied its sales in 2015. Manu Kumar Jain, general manager and head of India operations, Xiaomi Corp, reveals his plans to Arnab Dutta over an extended telephonic conversation. Edited excerpts

How was 2015 for Xiaomi in India?

The year was our first full year in India, and we sold some 1.5 million devices in the December quarter, after crossing 1 million units in July-September. We have offline distribution through Airtel, Mobile Store and Redington and online sales through Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and mi.com. We also started local manufacturing in partnership with Foxconn in July.
 

We are already one of the top three smartphone brands in the online channel and have established our business for the long term in India.

Where does India figure in your priority list of markets?

India is the second most important market for us. With 240 million mobile Internet users, India is vital for our growth. Our focus is to bring in new handsets here as soon as possible. We plan to introduce the Mi5 here by April, weeks after its China launch.

Local manufacturing helps us reduce the time between order and delivery. We will come up with more India-specific features in 2016.

Is Xiaomi changing focus to offline sales?

No, our focus was and remains on online distribution. Of course, we want to increase our offline penetration. If sales through brick-and-mortar outlets climb to 30 per cent of the total in the next two years it will be a great achievement. To keep a tab on costs, we opted for a 'direct to retailer' model for offline sales, where only one intermediary (Redington) contacts retailers directly on a weekly basis.

What do you plan to do new in 2016?

Apart from introducing a more models this year, we will be strengthening mi.com. It will become an online marketplace where other sellers will be trading. We are also increasing our warehousing capacity, including a 50,000 sq ft warehouse in Bengaluru.

We will launch a number of devices that can be connected with smartphones. Of the five categories we deal in, we will introduce a few in India. Scaling up the service network is also under way.