Smartphone company Xiaomi declared on 26 March, that it will be investing Rs 6000-7000 crore in 100 Indian startups over a period of five years, as per media reports.
Till the last year, the net investment of the company in India amounted to Rs 3000 crore. However, Manu Kumar Jain, the Managing Director and vice-president of Xiaomi India has clarified their intention to invest more in the country.
“The companies that the company is looking to invest in, are more in mobile software tech side which will help strengthen hardware and software ecosystem,”
he said.
Xiaomi had invested in 10 startups until 2017 and the new investment will be to further strengthen the ecosystem.
Xiaomi’s market in India
The company intends to expand beyond smartphones in India and launched its first flagship experience store in Chennai three weeks ago.
There it is offering products sold in China but not available in India. The products include an electric cycle, a self- balancing scooter, an electric folding bike, smart shoes, smart cooker, laptop, water purifier.
The company is to gauge the reactions of the people and take in their feedbacks before it is launched in a full-fledged fashion.
When Xiaomi started almost eight years ago, the aim was to build an internet company, he said adding that the company has several internet products called as ecosystem products.
“Our aim is to make everything smart, internet-enabled and eventually run by a smartphone,”
he said.
Outside of China, India is the first country where Xiaomi has introduced its televisions.
It also sells smartphones, air purifiers and mobile accessories like power banks.
“India is a very important market for us and within a very short time, we have been able to capture significant market share in the smartphone market. TV is a big category after smartphones for Xiaomi and in China, we are the fastest growing TV brand,”
he said.
The combined market share of the company in online and offline is 27 per cent as per market research institute GFK.
“We grew almost 20-30 times in offline. We already have 2,500-Mi preferred partners in 25 big cities in India,”
he said.
The company has around 750 service centres for phones across the country, Jain explained.
The company wants to manufacture everything in India. But a minimum volume is required to start the manufacturing. Also, it is important that the return-on-Investment analysis is favourable. Only then would the company want to set up local factories.
The company has expanded to five big warehouses and 26 smaller ones in India.Jain pointed out that Chandigarh is one of the biggest centres for the company in north India. “As per GFK, Xiaomi holds 40.3 percent market share in Chandigarh’s offline smartphone market for January 2018,”
he said.
With Bengaluru now ranked 20th in a global startup ecosystem ranking done by US-based research firm Startup Genome, news of such investments by a foreign company into Indian startups can only be ‘good news’.
The central and the state government also has been working towards making the dream of ‘Startup India’ a reality.
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