Xiaomi has announced that it has partnered with distributors Just Buy Live and InnoComm, aiming to establish a strong presence in the offline smartphone market of India.
The new collaboration will take advantage of a direct-to-retail (DTR) model fine-tuned for the Indian market. The two new distributors will supply directly to the retail stores straight away after buying from Xiaomi.
This model will help Xiaomi bypass multiple middlemen layers and save considerably on distribution cost. The method will let the company expand rapidly with minimum cost.
Xiaomi products to be available in 5,000 offline stores
This new partnership will instantly make Xiaomi products available in 5,000 offline stores. Gradually within a few months, this will expand to 10,000 offline stores across India. This will result in 10 times increase from its present network which is restricted to South India in collaboration with Redington.
With this new offline expansion, Xiaomi wishes to reach many potential customers residing in smaller cities and towns and even rural areas, who don’t have proper internet access and exposure. And thus were left completely inaccessible by the online-only sale model of the company.
Xiaomi’s approach to conquering the Indian market is different from that of China, where it mainly focuses on the partnership with retail chains and telecom companies. The company successfully manages to sell almost 30 percent of its total sale through offline stores in China, whereas, it hasn’t even managed 10 percent in India. In India, Xiaomi targets to reach the same level of China within a year.
The company has also disclosed plans to open 1,000 offline experience stores in its mother country, China within three to four years’ timeline. After entering the Indian market, Xiaomi rapidly gained a lot of popularity and entered the top five spot among the smartphone manufacturers in the country.
Check Xiaomi Mi Max initial impressions below:
But with the arrival of LeEco, Vivo, Oppo and other rivals from China who not only focussed on the online market but also swiftly expanded offline, Xiaomi is facing some serious competition.
Like Xiaomi, brands like LeEco and Oppo have also appealed for single-brand-retail permission eyeing to layout their own exclusive stores.
In India, there’s still a huge amount of sale comes from the brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country due to limited internet availability in many areas throughout the country. Thus, luring manufacturers to aggressively expand their offline presence.
