The Big Interview with Manu Kumar Jain, Xiaomi India

Dec 14, 2016

You know that I wont when meet a quality article i prefer to refer you to him. Today i recommend an interview that deserves to be read carefully. What you learn. Take a few responses below.

There is also the matter of thinking different, no matter how similar it sounds to the mantra of a Cupertino company that many feel Xiaomi is inspired by.

“The first thing actually has to be the product. The second thing which has helped us is thinking differently. If you look at most of the companies, they either innovate on product or process,” he stops on seeing our quizzical looks and tries to make his point clearer.

“Let me try and explain this. Google was not the first search engine. Facebook was not the first social media company. There were others before them but they innovated on the product and came up with a new kind of a search and social media platform – they innovated on the product. If you look at most of the e-commerce platforms, say Flipkart and Amazon, they innovated on the process because it is the same clothes, same shoes that you buy offline but it is a new digitalised way. And if you look at Uber and Ola, the same taxis that we used to book earlier but now you book it in a new process. I think we have thought of it in a way of innovating in terms of both process and product.”

He moves his hands in the air as if carrying the thought process to Xiaomi. “Innovation of MIUI, innovation of product, and selling it in a very different manner which is only online. And doing marketing differently which is just led by word of mouth rather and social media rather than going through the normal loop.”

And his hands come together as he moves on to the next point, which is rather surprisingly about keeping things, well, small.

“Every time we do something, the usual philosophy, if you look at most of the other companies is: go big. Our philosophy is usually: go small. Go small but do a good job and build something which is scalable and sustainable.”

The idea seems so unusual for a brand that is doing so well in numerical terms that Jain moves on to elaborate:

“Let me give you an example, when we started online sales, we only worked with one platform: Flipkart. But the aim was to become a dominant banner on Flipkart and then go on other platforms like Amazon, Snapdeal, Paytm and others,” he pauses for emphasis and continues. “But we only started with one. We could have started with four but we only started with one. Even now when we are starting to do business offline, we started with only the south and now we are expanding to a few other cities. In the cities where we are happy. We are not one of those companies who would all of a sudden want a distribution channel across hundreds of cities. The philosophy is: do less, do small but do a good job.”

Once again, the extrapolates the concept to his own company.

“This year we have only launched four phones: the Mi 5, the Mi Max, the Redmi 3s, and the Redmi Note 3. Just four phones. But with four phones, we have number three position in the market. Do few but do a good job. I think, the thinking of innovating on process and doing fewer things and doing them well is a very different thing.”

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By Tudor
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