Xiaomi bets big on offline sales model for India growth story

CHENNAI: Chinese phonemaker Xiaomi is diversifying retail presence across from its exclusive online store and multi-brand marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart to franchised offline stores branded MiHome, which will touch the 100-store mark in two years.

So far, Xiaomi has its flagship offline store in Bengaluru, with plans to step into Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, and Hyderabad. Its service centres will touch 500 by end of July this year and it will add two more warehouses through the year.

"Still a large number of people want the touch-and-feel method of buying phones. But, we will go ahead with our offline model in a way it is cost-effective too,"said Manu Kumar Jain, Managing Director of Xiaomi India.

Xiaomi now sells phones, fitness bands, air purifiers, routers and headsets in India but plans, without concretes outlines, to bring more of its products sold across the world like laptops and smart shoes. The phone brand now sells 90% of its phones online while the rest is still sold through offline multi-brand retailers. In the future, Xiaomi hopes to bring down the proportion of online sales to 50% to strike a balance between the sales channels.

Xiaomi's India phones are made at contract manufacturer Foxconn's factory in Sri City in Andhra Pradesh, where it had contracted a second unit, exclusive for Xiaomi, inside the Foxconn SEZ. Nearly 5,000 employees in Foxconn's factory are employed in the manufacture of Xiaomi's phones.