Xiaomi India Appoints Deeepak Nakhra As Offline Sales Head
Xiaomi India Appoints Deeepak Nakhra As Offline Sales Head

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has appointed Deepak Nakra as offline sales head for the Indian market in a bid to strengthen its position in the offline channel. Nakra was previously working with Samsung India as director of sales (South and West India) for the Korean company's mobile division.

The poaching comes at a time when Xiaomi is gunning to dethrone Samsung from the top spot in India, from being neck-and-neck at present.

Manu Jain, Vice President, Xiaomi and Managing Director, Xiaomi India said “Welcoming Deepak Nakra to the Xiaomi India family. Excited to announce that Deepak will now be leading offline sales for Xiaomi India. Deepak has worked with several top handset brands & telecom providers and brings with him 20 years of sales & marketing experience. Xiaomi India had started its offline journey nine months ago and it has already grown 20x during this short span of time. "I'm confident that Deepak will help us strengthen this position even further.”

Xiaomi is expecting over 30 percent of its sales in India to come through offline stores by early next year. It has also joined hands with Reliance Digital to sell Smartphone across the country. At present offline accounts for 20% of the sales in India, the rest coming from online includes its own store Mi.com, which has doubled on-year.

Jain also said “To ramp up its offline presence in the country, the Chinese company is planning to have 1500 offline stores across 30 cities by 2017-end. The handset maker is using its ‘preferred partner’ model for its Xiaomi stores in the country. For this, the company finds out about the key mobile markets in cities and shortlists few key partners over which are non-exclusive Xiaomi stores but focus on Xiaomi and majority of their business comes from it”.

 
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