Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has raced ahead of all smartphone players across the globe and is on par with Samsung, which has been the market leader for several years. In India too, Xiaomi’s Redmi series has seen some of the bestselling smartphones.
Furthering its commitment towards the Indian market, Xiaomi is looking to invest nearly $1 billion in 100 startups in India over the next five years, CEO Lei Jun told Mint in an interview.
Xiaomi’s investment in startups will be with the idea of creating an ecosystem of apps around the brand.
“We will basically replicate the most successful ecosystem business model of China in India. We will have all types of services and products and integrate them. That is the Xiaomi business model. We focus on a few key things and everything else, we let our partners provide. We’ve reached just a huge scale in seven years because of this partnership/affiliation model,” Mint quotes Lei Jun as saying.
The focus, in terms of sectors, will be content, FinTech and hyperlocal startups which could include those providing services such as mobile phone repairs.
After entering the Indian market in 2014, Xiaomi became the joint number 1 smartphone brand in India in the September quarter along with Samsung, both having a market share of 23.5% each.
However, this won’t be the first time Xiaomi will be investing in startups in India. Along with its sister firm Shunwei Capital, it has, in the past, invested in six internet companies in India.
This investment commitment makes Xiaomi one of the largest investmors in India along with bigwigs such as SoftBank, Alibaba, Tencent, etc. However, Xiaomi is focused only on startups that will increase the adoption of smartphones, particularly its own.
Mint reports that the Chinese smartphone maker is also hoping to make its lower-end phones more lucrative to buy by providing and integrating entertainment content and other services and continue to stay ahead of competition. As long as it is related to acceleration mobile internet, Leii says Xiaomi will be interested. However, the kind of investment Xiaomi is looking at is only minority stakes, where it will closely work with these startups.