Anuj Sharma is Xiaomi’s new marketing head for India

NEW DELHI: Xiaomi has appointed Anuj Sharma as the head of marketing to accelerate market share growth in India ahead of the festive season. The development takes place at a time when the Chinese handset maker is locked in an intense battle with Korea's Samsung for the top spot in India's highly-competitive smartphone market.

"Anuj will be heading end-to-end marketing at Xiaomi India, including all functions and product lines," Xiaomi India head Manu Jain said in a Facebook post.

Sharma has over 15 years of experience in the technology domain, having had a long stint at Lenovo & Motorola, where he played various roles, including heading online sales, product marketing & product management.


“At Xiaomi, we believe in ‘marketing without advertising’. We've always innovatively used social media, Mi Community and various Mi Fan forums to do our marketing, rather than spend 100s of crores in traditional advertising!,” Jain said.

He said that for the first three years — till the company became the No. 1 smartphone brand in India — it spent almost zero marketing dollars.

After two straight quarters of Xiaomi being the clear leader, the April-June period threw up a mixed verdict: Counterpoint put Samsung ahead of Xiaomi, with 29% and 28% share, respectively; IDC had Xiaomi at 29.7% to Samsung’s 23.9%, while Canalys had Xiaomi and Samsung neck and neck — 30.4% to 30.2%, respectively.

The upcoming festive season will see both Xiaomi and Samsung push new devices into the market with targeted offers to accelerate sell through. Canalys research manager Rushabh Doshi recently told ET that both vendors are primed to ship 10 to 12 million units, with both winners in the Indian smartphone market."