After launching the ‘Mi 4i’ at their Global event in New Delhi few days back, yesterday Xiaomi announced that Mr Ratan Tata will be their new investor and will also be an advisor for them. The news came out after Xiaomi VP of global Hugo Barra tweeted “We’re really excited to announce our newest Xiaomi investor — Mr Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons.”
Mr Ratan Tata in the past has made investments in the few other Indian start-ups like BigBasket, Snapdeal, Paytm, BlueStone and few others. Now by investing in Xiaomi makes him the first Indian to invest in the Chinese technology start-up. The company hasn’t mentioned any details about the percentage of stake brought by Mr Ratan Tata.
Lei Jun, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xiaomi had said “Mr. Tata is one of the most well-respected business leaders in the world. An investment by him is an affirmation of the strategy we have undertaken in India so far. We are looking forward to bringing more products into India.”
After launching in July, 2014; Xiaomi had grown as the fifth largest Smartphone vendor in India through this small span of time. Though it sold their Smartphone’s through Flipkart initially, recently it expanded it to Snapdeal and Amazon. They have plans to sell the Smartphone’s directly from their main site like how they are selling the Xiaomi accessories at ‘mi.com/in’.
“We want to become an Indian company. That is why we are building an R&D team here and setting up data centre. We want to manufacture and also invest in start-ups in India,” Lin, Co-Founder and President of Xiaomi said.
Xiaomi, which is often referred as ‘Apple of China’, had started as a small start-up in 2010. The Growth of Xiaomi as the biggest Smartphone maker in China topping Samsung and Apple that too within four years of its inception is incredible.
Xiaomi is the third largest Smartphone vendor (worldwide) by its sale volume of 61 million Smartphone’s sold across the world. Since Xiaomi had targeted to sell 100 million Smartphone’s by the end of 2015, India will be their major market outside of China to make its target achieved.
