Xiaomi to invest in warehousing and logistics for its Mi Store

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi will launch a full fledged e commerce store for its devices, reports Vccircle. The company already sells its goods via mi.com and will now invest in setting up a warehouse and logistics as well. However, it’s not clear where the company plans to set up its warehouse.

Xiaomi has been increasingly focusing on selling its devices on its own, rather through other ecommerce websites. This likely helps the company’s profit margins, as it sells relatively high end phones for relatively low prices. Earlier this month, it had also launched the beta version of its global MI store app in India, that would sell the company’s entire product line once live on the Play store. As of now the company claims it gets a few thousand orders per day from across ecommerce websites.

Advertisement

 

Manufacturing in India: As of now, Xiaomi mentions that it is in talks with various state governments for setting up the plant, although the company will manufacture through a contractual manufacturer. This is in line with last month’s report when Foxconn said it would start making Xiaomi phones in Andhra Pradesh, India, although the company did not give out specific dates.

In November last year, Xiaomi revealed its plans to start making smartphones in India as it continued to struggle to match consumer demand.  At the time, Barra had toldBloomberg that production in India would likely begin in a year or two. As of now, the company is also looking to set up a research and development centre in Bangalore.

Investments: Xiaomi mentioned that it would consider investing in a few technology startup companies. According to the company, it is currently in talks with a few established startups that have raised a round or two of funding, to invest in.

In September last year, Xiaomi’s venture capital arm Xiaomi Ventures, invested $25 millionin Andon Health Company, a startup that designs and manufactures health information devices. The startup, which is based in China, was to setup a new entity called iHealth in the US of which Xiaomi would pick up 20% stake in return for the investment.

Device sales: Xiaomi claimed that it sold 34.7 million phones in the first half of 2015 (H1 2015), registering a 33% year-on-year (YoY) growth over H1 2014. It’s worth noting that Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun had recently claimed that the company was targeting 80 million to 100 million phone sales in 2015. He had also claimed that the company was targeting revenues of $16-32 billion for the year.

The Beijing-based company is currently operational in India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, besides China. It recently started selling in Brazil as well, starting with the Redmi 2. Earlier in the year, the company hadopened its official US online store, though it currently only sells accessories and not smartphones.