Xiaomi India head: The number of stores will increase from 500 to 5,000 in 2019

Manu Kumar Jain, Xiaomi's global vice president and head of India, said today that India's new e-commerce policy, which came into effect in February this year, has not had any adverse impact on Xiaomi. In an interview with the Economic Times of India, Jain said that the new e-commerce policy has no adverse impact on Xiaomi because Xiaomi's mobile phones have not been sold exclusively on any e-commerce platform in the past two years.

Instead, Xiaomi sells its phones through Flipkart, Amazon, Mi Mall, 5,000 selected Mi partner stores and large chains such as Reliance, Big C and Poorvika.

Jain also said that for those mobile phone brands that sell exclusively, they may need to change their business model. But for Xiaomi, the situation has not changed. At the same time, Xiaomi also believes in the future of e-commerce.

As for the scale of online business, Jain said that last year, 2/3 of Xiaomi's sales came from online sales and 1/3 from offline sales. This year, it is expected that online and offline sales will each account for 50%. In order to develop offline business, Xiaomi will expand to hundreds of new cities in India.

In the Indian smartphone market, online sales account for 35%, while offline sales account for 65%. Jain said that in the past two years, Xiaomi has accounted for 50% of India's online sales, ranking first. The second largest brand only has a 7% to 8% share. In offline sales, Xiaomi's share was less than 1% two years ago, but now it has exceeded 20%, ranking second.

Talking about offline retail expansion plans, Jain said that Xiaomi has 50 Mi Homes in 10 cities in India, and this number will double this year. In addition, Xiaomi has 5,000 selected partner stores, and this number will also double this year. In addition, Xiaomi has 500 Mi stores (for small towns), and the goal this year is to develop to more than 5,000. By then, Xiaomi will become one of the largest rural retail chain companies in India.