Xiaomi will be expanding its reach to almost 5000 stores. Soon more Mi phones will be sold in the offline stores. The Chinese smartphone makers have partnered up with two companies named Just Buy Live and Innocomm which handles the offline distribution of the smartphones.
The makers of the Mi series of smartphones have said before that they are going to focus on the offline sales more in India. Xiaomi identifies themselves as an e-commerce company selling their phones on their own website and the partners such as Flipkart.
Just Buy Live is a company which an e-commerce platform for the retailers. While Inncomm is the offline distribution arm of the third party phone manufacturing company Foxconn. Xiaomi is already in talks with the company for opening up more production units in India. It already has one plant in Hyderabad which produces Xiaomi phones.
"We are primarily an e-commerce company and we have brought our learning from the online model to our offline model. We have chosen Just Buy Live and Innocomm because of their unique models that distribute directly to retailers," Manu Jain the head of Xiaomi India said.
"I believe that this strategic alliance will strengthen Mi India's presence across India. As we expand to more than 5000 offline outlets, it allows more people to experience our products and purchase them easily," he added.
More and more companies are concentrating on offline sales in India. Flash sales are good for the start but later on more distribution channels are needed. LeEco said that they will be rolling out more stores in India for the offline sales. It is targeting to achieve 70% of their sales through the offline channel by September 2017.
Micromax's subsidiary Yu mobile is also going to sell phones in the brick and mortar stores. Their newly launched Yu Yunicorn is now available in the stores.
Recently, Xiaomi launched their giant phone Mi Max in India. The phone has a huge 6.44-inch screen and a 4850 mAh of battery. Mi Max had its first flash sales on July 6 where it was sold at ₹14999. The launch of the phone was controversial as some of the fans started chanting "Mi hai hai" because they didn't get the freebies.