by Xiaomi, also known as the ‘Apple of India’, has announced plans to launch its own ecommerce site in the country. The company is already in talks with multiple partners and the launch is scheduled for early 2015, pending approval. Xiaomi registered its first local unit in Bengaluru in October 2015, under the name ‘Indian Xiaomi Technology India Pvt. Ltd’ and is putting a real drive into the operations side of things with the team growing rapidly at a headcount of 40+.
Hugo Barra, vice president of Xiaomi Global, recently spoke about upcoming launch and said that ‘We are working step by step in building our own e-commerce platform in India. Setting up own e-commerce platform is a complex task…it requires custom clearance, warehousing, payment integration, last-mile connectivity. We are talking to a number of partners… we don’t have specific launch date yet but it will happen sometime in first half of the next year.’ Barra added that “India is already our second largest market after China and without doubt the fastest growing market, too.’ Xiaomi had originally entered the Indian ecommerce market with the well known ‘Flipkart’ service, in order to streamline the difficult logistics and payments process in the country – similar to the approach it has taken with the Philippines.
Xiaomi’s own website will continue to work alongside Flipkart.com, and as Indian regulations prevent foreign entities from selling online on their own, the company is looking at ways to set up its own ecommerce portal. ‘We are talking to different tax advisory firms, lawyers and trying to figure out what is the most efficient way of doing things both from a regulatory perspective and day-to-day operations perspective,’ said the India operations head at Xiaomi, Manu Jain.
Following the launch, the company also intends to begin manufacturing in India, with Barra stating that ‘We want to do that at some point…we have to find partners to be able to manage a manufacturing operation in India and that is going to take time. We have started conversations with multiple partners but we don’t have a line of sight to the launch’. The firm currently imports up to 100,000 units of phones to India monthly, so it is clear to see why it is considering setting up their manufacturing process on site.
Registrations for Xiaomi’s latest Smartphone, the Redmi Note will open at 6pm in India today, with general release confirmed for December 2nd.