Chinese firm Xiaomi that pursues a strategy of manufacturing products through third parties is keen on getting more of its products made in India. From television to t-shirts, the list of such products to be made locally is varied.
“We are definitely exploring [prospects] of setting up more factories for all other products,” Xiaomi vice president and Xiaomi India MD Manu Jain said.
Popular smartphones
The company, popular in the country for its Mi and Redmi brands of smartphones, now gets the handheld devices made at six factories in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Noida. Of these, five belong to Foxconn in two States. Besides smartphones, it also makes power banks in the country.
For everything else, from televisions, headphones, t-shirts, cases, covers and speakers “we want to set up local factories,” Mr. Jain said at the opening of Xiaomi's 1,000th service centre in India, here on Wednesday. All proposed factories would also be third-party owned.
‘Only design’
“We don't own a factory anywhere in the world not even in China... don't manufacture any product anywhere in the world. Only design [them],” he said.
As a design-focused company, it designed products, hardware and software, procures components and supplied them to partners such as Foxconn, who, in turn, shape them into products for Xiaomi to market, Mr. Jain said.
Akin to the manufacturing strategy, the company does not own any of the service centres. In July 2017, Xiaomi had opened its 500th authorised service centre in the country, at Bengaluru and in less than one year from there doubled the number.
Mr.Jain said Xiaomi has also emerged as the industry leader in after sales service against other players, as per a report from Red Quanta. Citing IDC figures, he said Xiaomi India was the number one smartphone brand in India in Q3 and Q4 2017 and Q1 of 2018 with 9-10 million shipped from the factories each quarter.
To a query, Mr. Jain said more than 65% of the Xiaomi smartphone sales happened online, something the company expected to change as it expands to smaller cities. Share of offline retail, he added, is expected to go up to 50%.
