India bigger priority for us than China: Lei Jun

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. disrupted the Indian market with its cost-efficient Mi range of phones and has gained handsomely since it introduced them in the country in 2014.

According to International Data Corp., Xiaomi, along with South Korean firm Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, were joint leaders in the Indian smartphone market with each controlling 23.5% market share. Lei Jun, Xiaomi's founder, also known as LJ, believes his company needs to forget that they are No.1 in the market even though the company will get the confidence to do "cool" things in India.

In an interview, the 49-year-old Chinese entrepreneur said that his firm has given India priority over its home market China and will build products keeping India in mind first. With a research and development (R&D) centre, coupled with focus on design in India, the company plans to bring around 200 products in India which are not just smartphones. Edited excerpts:

You have become joint No.1 in the Indian market in no time. How do you plan to consolidate your position? Ranking No.1 to the Indian team is still very crucial and important. Most importantly, it will give a lot of confidence to the India team. Also, China is such a gigantic market and in India, we have proven that Xiaomi products and the model. The next thing that we are to do is that forget ourselves being No.1. We are a start-up. We need to build the coolest products and offer them at a very honest and reasonable price. Then, more Indian customers will like our brand. We will bring them a lot more cool and interesting products. So, we really don't need to worry about how the competitors see us. We just have to keep up to what our fans think about us.

What sort of war chest have you prepared in terms of new products, investments, etc? We will definitely bring more interesting and high quality products into the Indian market. For example, this pen (shows a pen) costs two US dollars and it is a very smooth writing. Another example is screw drivers... very exquisite. In China, we sell it for 100 RMB. Other competitor products are 10 times worse in quality but three times more expensive. This is the most favoured screw drivers by engineers made by Xiaomi. So, which of the other products do you plan to bring to India?

That you will find out in the next two months. In China, we have some 200 products. In India, we have some 20 products, which is very few... mainly because we have very few people in India office... only 350. We are growing way too fast.

So, we really need to select the products that Indian consumers will love the most. We believe it will take us 3-4 years to reach to the levels of 200 products, which we could bring in. So, you are saying that you are constrained by your team strength in India to launch new products?

No it is mainly because of the rapid growth that we have seen. Because, even if we bring them to India, we won't do justice as the customers won't really understand why they are so good. So, our philosophy is all about being focused.

So, quantity is not the most important metric. It is actually every product has to be a best seller.

Most of these products that we are talking about are initially designed for the Chinese environment. So, in the past two years, we have implemented India number one priority strategy at our headquarters. From R&D, design, we have considered a lot of Indian consumer needs.

For example, India's climate is hotter. In China, we have such good products; but when we brought them to India, some users said there are some overheating issues. In the beginning, we were very confused and realised they suffered initially because of India's climate. So, later in India, while selling products, we included a lot of these thermal diffusing components, including the charging cable, which is very good quality in China. In India, some people were complaining that there are some defects with the cable.