The man who established Xiaomi
Manu Kumar Jain, the Global Vice President of Xiaomi and the Managing Director of Xiaomi India, is the man who established Xiaomi as the most selling brand in India. A brilliant IITian and co-founder of Jabong.com, Manu Kumar Jain played an instrumental role in making Xiaomi India’s number one smartphone brand. Under his apt leadership Xiaomi overtook the Korean colossus Samsung to become the smartphone leader in India in just a span of three years. It was Mr. Jain’s strategy to act more like an Indian company and address the basic needs of the Indian users that bolstered this growth. Be it the feature of dual sim card or sourcing the materials from India, cutting down the margins and avoiding hefty expense on marketing, Mr. Jain was able to crack the balance of best features at the best prices.
This visionary tech lover noted a major spike in the traffic on the e-commerce platform and majority of it was mobile traffic. It was then, Mr. Jain realized the fore coming rise in the demands for smartphones. Though he knew nothing about smartphones or the market, he was ready to plunge into the market. So, in 2014, when the Chinese giant Xiaomi tapped him to build its India operations from the ground up, it seemed like the perfect coincidence. Without any knowledge or experience in the smartphone market, Mr. Jain was a novice who was ready to unlearn and learn the rules of the game all over again. He regularly carried between 30 to 40 smartphones in his bag, testing out features and checking out competitors.
His heavy lifting paid off!
Today Xiaomi is not only the leading smartphone provider in India but also the top smart TV and power bank seller. His achievements received loads of awards and acknowledgements. He even made numerous Guinness World Records, featured in Fortune and Economic Times 40 under 40 lists, GQ’s 50 most influential young Indians. Forbes India awarded him as Best CEO of the year 2019.