Xiaomi will continue to grow through offline retail stores and will add other two smart products to its India portfolio in 2018.
In just three years, Xiaomi has become one of the biggest players in the Indian smartphone industry and the company continues to expand. Xiaomi's current goal is to expand its offline presence in India.
Manu Kumar Jain, Managing Director of Xiaomi India, told Reuters "If you look at 2017 and 2018 combined, the biggest change in our strategy is our focus on offline”. The company launched its first Mi Home in May last year and is running ahead of schedule of launching 100 Mi Home store by mid-2019. There are already 17 Mi Home stores running in India right now. Besides that, the company has plans to add more preferred partner stores along with tie-ups with other multi-brand stores.
Since its launch in India, Xiaomi has focused its efforts primarily on the online front, tying up with e-retail giants like Flipkart and US-based Amazon. The company has grabbed eyeballs as well as its share of bad press due to its flash sale system for some pocket-friendly smartphones it offers. While Xiaomi already has a significant offline presence in big Indian cities, the Chinese company will be expanding further to other cities tapping into the offline retail space which accounts for 70 percent of the local revenue.
Xiaomi launched eight phones in 2017, ranging from Rs. 4,999 to Rs. 32,999. Jain told Reuters that the company will launch around six to eight phones this year across important price segments in India. He said, "We want to improve on whatever we launched in 2017 and also launch and plug whatever we think are the big use cases where we are not present”.
Besides phones, Xiaomi also has plans to launch two new smart products in 2018. The company is already selling other products such as fitness bands, mobile accessories, air purifiers, routers, Mobile VR headsets and power banks in India. In its home country, China, Xiaomi sells a lot of products including things like rice cookers, TVs, and laptops, but we are not sure which new products line will make its way to India.
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