Manu Kumar Jain, who had been leading the India operations of the China-based phone maker Xiaomi as its Country Head, has now been elevated to Global Vice President and Managing Director for India. This development comes a few weeks after the departure of Hugo Barra, who was working as the Vice President of the company, left to join Facebook as Vice President of Virtual Reality.
@manukumarjain, congratulations from the entire Xiaomi family on your promotion to Vice President of Xiaomi! pic.twitter.com/gxc1mfwPIK
— Mi India (@XiaomiIndia) February 17, 2017
Manu Kumar Jain had joined Xiaomi in the year 2014 to oversee the company’s foray in the Indian market, which is one of the largest smartphone markets in the world. Under his leadership, the company has registered a phenomenal growth in India.
Prior to joining Xiaomi, Manu Kumar Jain was a co-founder of Jabong.com — an online fashion portal, which has now been acquired by its rival Myntra, owned by Flipkart.
India has now become the most important market for Xiaomi, after its home market. Xioami has now grabbed the number 2 spot in the country during Q4 2016. According to the IDC report, the company has climbed up to second place with 10.7% share in CY Q4 2016 versus 3.3% during the same quarter last year. Year-on-year shipments grew threefold with a sequential growth of 15.3% in CY Q4 2016.
Currently, Samsung is dominating the smartphone market in India with over 25.1 percent market share. However, Xiaomi has a better annual growth rate of 14.8 percent as compared to Samsung’s 3.2 percent.
Xioami has been focusing on the budget segment in India with its recently launched Redmi Note 3 and Redmi 3S-series smartphones. It has recently launched the successor of Redmi Note 3, dubbed as Redmi Note 4. In India, the company is now looking to expand its presence in the offline market and will soon open exclusive single-brand retail outlets.
