Xiaomi to expand offline presence in India to take on Samsung

Chinese handset maker Xiaomi, which is the biggest smartphone seller in India, aims to continue expanding in offline channels as it competes against the likes of Samsung in the country, Manu Jain, Vice President, Xiaomi and Managing Director, Xiaomi India, said in New Delhi on Tuesday.

"Our biggest success story has been our offline journey, including setting up more preferred partners, more Mi Home stores.

"One of the biggest focus areas for us would continue to be the offline business. We want to hold the 50 per cent share in online and continue to build our share in offline," Jain told IANS on the sidelines of an event in the Capital.

The smartphone maker currently has more than 50 Mi Home stores and 500 Mi Stores across the country and over 4,000 preferred partner stores in 50-plus markets.

At present, its rival Samsung leads the offline smartphone sales.

The company's Mi.com portal is the third largest e-commerce platform in India.

"We're also launching new categories. Overall, the company is doing exceptionally well in India. From a smartphone business perspective we are now the No. 1 brand for six consecutive quarters by a huge margin.

"For the entire CY 2018, according to IDC numbers, we were almost 30 per cent bigger than the second largest brand. In Q4, we were 50 per cent bigger than the second biggest brand," Jain added.

The company currently has a combined manufacturing capacity of up to three smartphones per second during operating hours and 99 per cent of its phones sold here are made in India.

The handset maker launched 500 Mi Stores across 470 villages in 14 states in October 2018. It had said that to cater to the demands of smartphones and TVs in rural areas, it would increase this number to 5,000 Mi Stores by the end of 2019.

"The government is super excited about what we're doing. Officials in Meity ask us what else can we do to facilitate this further. We're in constant conversation with "Invest in India" programme too," he added.

The company on Tuesday introduced its Android Go smartphone -- the Redmi Go in India for Rs 4,499. It is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 chip powered device.

(Krishna SinhaChaudhury can be contacted at krishna.s@ians.in)