After having focused on building a strong online presence, Xiaomi is now setting its sights on tapping the offline market. While the company already has entered into partnerships with a few offline partners, it has now added two more offline partners, Just Buy Live and Innocomm. Xiaomi hopes the new partnership will help increase its presence to more than 5,000 offline outlets across India. Also Read - Today’s Tech News: Samsung Galaxy S21 launch, Xiaomi blacklisted, Vaio laptops launched
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Xiaomi s partnership with Just Buy Live and Innocomm will join other partner offline retailers such as Sangeetha, Big C, LOT Mobiles, Poorvika to name a few. The new partners will implement Xiaomi’s direct-to-retail (DTR) model for distribution for the Indian market. The DTR model allows the company to sell products directly to retailers via a single distributor as per the demand.
The smartphone which will be available in the new offline stores are Xiaomi Redmi 2, Redmi 2 Prime, Redmi Note Prime, Redmi Note 3 and Mi 5. The latest Mi Max will also be available in these stores starting July 13. The prices of all devices will match those similar to the online prices.
Xiaomi started off its India foray with an online-exclusive model wherein its smartphones were exclusively available with e-commerce platform Flipkart. Later, the company expanded its online presence with tie ups with other e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Snapdeal and Tata’s TataCliQ. Xiaomi also has its own online store, mi.com, for selling its products.
For offline, Xiaomi recently tied up with Redington to sell its smartphones in offline retail stores in India. Earlier, Xiaomi had tied up with Airtel stores where it made its Redmi Note 4G available and later, it tied up with The Mobile Store for limited availability of its smartphones.
Besides having new offline and online partners, Xiaomi has made some other changes in its strategy to tap the Indian market as well. While the company initially relied on its Mi community and social networking platforms to promote its products, later the company embraced the traditional methods of advertising that include ad space in leading newspapers and even a TV commercial.
