In a bid to further strengthen its position in the highly demanding smartphone market, Xiaomi has announced that it will start selling phones via physical retail stores in India.
The Chinese smartphone maker has partnered with Redington, one of the largest distributors of cellphones in India to sell its devices offline. Since, its entry in Indian markets in July last year, Xiaomi has been selling phones online via exclusive partnership with Flipkart. This year in April, Xiaomi teamed up with Amazon and Snapdeal for selling its devices and also extended sales through its own website.
The offline sales will initially be through 1,000-1,500 stores in 15 Indian cities, including Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mysore and Visakhapatnam. Xiaomi will sell four devices viz, Redmi 2, Mi 4, Mi 4i and Mi Pad for 5,999, Rs 14,999, Rs 12,999 and Rs 12,999 respectively, via retail stores in India starting later this month.
The company will start selling its phones through retail stores in phases and the first phase is expected to go live in the next 45-60 days. It will eventually make its products available across India by early 2016. Manu Jain, India operations head at Xiaomi expects offline sales in India to eventually contribute 25-30% of the overall numbers.
India is the second largest market for Xiaomi after China. In June this year, the company announced its plans to manufacture phone in India by partnering Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn while it has already announced in January this year that it will set up a R&D unit Bangalore.