NEW DELHI: India’s smartphone market has rebounded “very strongly” after the lockdown ended, mainly driven by pent-up demand and demand associated with online education, among others, according to Manu Jain, India managing director at market leader Xiaomi.
In an interview with ET, Jain said that production though hasn’t reached its previous levels, and the company is still importing small quantities of phones from abroad.
“Eventually, the aim is to again go back to the same level as earlier, maybe even to a higher level. Of course, we keep facing challenges because sometime in some factory, there will be some Covid-19 patient and then we need to shut down the line, sanitize. But despite all of those, things have scaled up significantly,” Jain said.
Even as the pandemic has disrupted and delayed the handset maker’s offline plans, Jain said that the channel will contribute 50% of overall sales by the end of this year.
“Because of Covid-19, a lot of clients got disrupted. And now, hopefully very soon, 50% of our business should come from offline…We are ensuring that offline business grows and are giving tools like Mi commerce to drive the growth,” Jain said, adding that conversion rate in offline retail has increased significantly for the company.
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