During his visit to India, Xiaomi’s Founder and CEO Lei Jun talked about the company’s plans for India, strategies, targets, and some hints on the upcoming product line. Here is what he said: 1) Plans to increase offline market share: “If we look at overall market, online is a small piece…so it’s rather dependent on how many people adopt the Internet. In China, after we have achieved such scale (in the online market), the challenge is how we can achieve the same in offline with efficiency. In India, after we achieved more than 50% market share in online space, the question is how to do the same in offline,” Jun said. More at ET. Note that the company had started expanding its offline distribution channel since July last year to around 5000 offline outlets across India. 2) New manufacturing plant: Xiaomi recently inducted a second manufacturing plant in Andhra Pradesh, and claimed that now more than 95% of its phones in the Indian market would be manufactured locally. According to this ET report, the company might even look at exporting Indian manufactured phones in the future. The smartphone maker recently claimed that it has crossed $1 billion in revenue from its India operations. Xiaomi makes money by selling phones, wearables, accessories, air purifiers, etc. In Q4 2016, Xiaomi was the second largest vendor in India in terms of smartphone shipments, according to IDC. The company’s Mi Band shipments also accounted for 10.3% of overall Indian wearable market in Q2 2016. 3) More warehouses…
