NEW DELHI: Chinese handset maker Xiaomi is taking a two-pronged strategy to drive the next phase of growth in India.
The smartphone giant, which has dominated the budget handset category for more than two years, plans to divide the portfolio into Mi and Redmi. After tasting success in the budget category, the company also plans to prep up its premium play under the Mi sub-brand and POCO.
Raghu Reddy, head of online sales of Xiaomi India, has said its aggressive focus on the premium segment will be reflected in the sustained set of launches through 2020. "We intend to bring the premium smartphones from the Mi line-up, which has recorded a substantial interest since we entered the market," he said.
With the move, the smartphone maker will directly compete with the market leader OnePlus. Other brands are also catching up fast. For instance, Realme was the fastest growing brand in July-September 2019 with a 16 per cent market share as compared to just 3 per cent a year-ago.
Separately, Xiaomi also announced that it was spinning off its premium sub-brand POCO as a standalone brand, which will now operate independently with its own team and go-to market strategy in the country.
"What started as a sub-brand in POCO has grown into its own identity in a short span of time. POCO F1 is an extremely popular phone across user groups, and remains a top contender in its category even in 2020. We feel the time is right to let POCO operate on its own now," Manu Jain, Xiaomi Vice President and Xiaomi India Managing Director, said.
Earlier, the company has said it believed in maintaining a proper balance for both offline and online. "Both platforms online and offline are equally important for us and currently our online to offline ratio is 60:40. However, we aim to bring the same to 50:50 very soon in 2020," Reddy said. Xiaomi currently has offline presence across 2500+ Mi Stores, 75+ Mi Home and 20+ Mi Studios, 7000+ Mi Preferred Partner stores.