Bye bye Flipkart?
Xiaomi plans to launch own
e-commerce website in India
e-commerce website in India
Following it’s trend
of selling their smartphones exclusively via online retail stores, Xiaomi has
now expressed plans to launch it’s own retail website in India.
As reported by Mint, the
company is in talks to tie up with various partners in order to launch
it’s own e-commerce website. However, it may take some time as it can only move
forward once it gets approval and the operations are in place. The website
is expected to launch in early 2015.
Xiaomi currently sells
its handsets and accessories in flash sales via Flipkart. According toMint, Xiaomi’s
e-commerce website will continue to work in parallel with
Flipkart.com. The company has also hired a team of 10 people in India
and approximately 40 call centre employees who’ll be handling the website
operations.
Manu Jain, India
operations head at Xiaomi had also told Firstpost that
the company is in the process of setting up its
own e-commerce operations in India. When asked about the timeframe,
he said, “It would be very difficult to say. It could happen anytime between
the next four to six months.” Manu Jain is also the co-founder of the
popular e-commerce site Jabong, and could lend his expertise at designing a
site for Xiaomi that suits Indian consumers.
Xiaomi had registered
it’s local unit by the name, ‘Indian Xiaomi Technology India Pvt. Ltd’
in Bengaluru in October 2014, the Mint report
added.
Today, Xiaomi, known
as the ‘Apple of China’, sells their products online with one of India’s
largest e-commerce company Flipkart.
According to reports,
Xiaomi’s Redmi Note has launched in India and will be available
in two variants: 3G dual-SIM, priced at Rs 8999, and a 4G variant priced
at Rs 9,999. In an exclusive tie-up with Airtel, the 4G variant will sell
in select Airtel retail stores. Flipkart has confirmed that
registrations for the Redmi Note will open today at 6pm and the phone will be
launched on December
2 as expected.