China’s Xiaomi will concentrate on growing its retail sales in India, according to its India president after making significant bets on e-commerce for years.
This is as the electronics giant tries to boost smartphone sales after slipping behind Samsung.
With 600 million smartphone users, India is one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world. In recent years, e-commerce sales through Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart have soared in India, assisting Xiaomi and other companies in growing there.
Although 44% of Indian smartphone sales now take place online, Xiaomi still sees brick-and-mortar sales as having a larger market share and anticipates additional growth in this area.
“Our market position in offline is substantially lower than what it is online,” Xiaomi’s India head, Muralikrishnan B., said in an interview on Friday.
“Offline is where you have other competitors who have been executing fairly well and have a larger market share.”
According to data from Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research, only 34% of Xiaomi’s India unit sales this year came from retail outlets, with the remainder coming from the websites that have traditionally been the company’s main source of sales.
In comparison, retailers account for 57% of Samsung’s revenues. Beyond the existing 18,000 locations, Xiaomi aims to increase its retail network and partner with more phone manufacturers to provide additional items like Xiaomi TVs or security cameras.
Xiaomi is making an offline effort now, months after losing the top spot to Samsung, which had a larger selection of the high-end smartphones that are currently in style. In India, the South Korean juggernaut holds a 20% market share, while Xiaomi, which has typically specialised in low-cost phones, holds a 16% share.
Xiaomi aims to hire more salesmen that entice, pitch, and sell phones to potential customers, and by the end of next year, the number of promoters is expected to have tripled from early 2023 levels, to 12,000 promoters.
