Following tough times and legal challenges in the Indian market, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has revamped its Indian leadership team. On Friday it announced that it had appointed British-national Alvin Tse as the General Manager for its operations in the world’s second-largest internet market.
Tse will take over the reins of Xiaomi’s India arm and support the company’s next phase of growth, Xiaomi announced. This comes after it had elevated Manu Kumar Jain, the former head of Xiaomi India, to Group Vice president at Xiaomi in 2021. Tse had earlier led Xiaomi’s operations in fellow South-Asian country Indonesia.
In Jain’s absence, Xiaomi’s India business is being run by its COO Muralikrishnan B, its chief business officer Raghu Reddy, and its CFO and Sameer BS Rao. Xiaomi announced that these three individuals will continue with their present roles in the company after the rejig.
Another change is the return of Anuj Sharma to Xiaomi. The former Motorola executive and ex-Xiaomi employee, who moved to POCO as its Country Director over two years ago, will rejoin the Chinese smartphone giant as its Chief Marketing Officer.
The company believes that under their guidance, “Xiaomi India will continue to stay true to its core philosophy of relentlessly building amazing products with honest prices such that everyone in the world can enjoy a better lifestyle through innovative technology.”
India happens to be Xiaomi’s largest market, and the Chinese titan led the domestic smartphone market in the first quarter of the year. It had a 23% shipment share, closely followed by Samsung (20%), realme (16%), Vivo (15%), and OPPO (9%).
Time will tell whether the new leadership will be able to help Xiaomi sort out the mess it is currently facing in the domestic market. Earlier, it ran afoul of the Enforcement Directorate, India’s federal law enforcement and economic intelligence agency.
The ED had in April seized assets worth $725 million from Xiaomi India after it was revealed that Xiaomi had allegedly made illegal remittances to foreign entities, a move that has been put on hold following a legal challenge by Xiaomi. The ED had also asked the company to pay $84.5 million for allegedly evading import taxes in January.
