Snap(ping) Flipkart's Deal - Xiaomi's Manu Jain on New Partnerships and More

When Xiaomi launched in India less than a year ago, few believed that a Chinese phone brand, available only through a single seller on the Internet, sold via a relatively complicated flash-sale model, would be a success. The company is celebrating its fifth year globally on Wednesday, and on Tuesday, Xiaomi India announced that it is ending its exclusive partnership with Flipkart, and will be available on Snapdeal and Amazon as well, going forward.

For Xiaomi India and Flipkart, the last eight months have been a rollercoaster. The site faced a lot of customer backlash, because of the flash sale model, which seemed to leave a lot more people angry than satisfied. Limited stocks that led to clearing the entire inventory in seconds makes for good headlines, but it leaves many frustrated. Xiaomi India's head Manu Jain freely admits that the company was unprepared for the demand it saw.

(Also see: Flipkart and Xiaomi Could Have Avoided the Backlash With OnePlus One-Like Invites)

"We genuinely thought that if we could sell 10,000 units in a week, that would be a huge accomplishment," says Jain, "but we never saw those seconds or minutes as a benchmark."

Still, the early days of the sales were particularly testing, and Flipkart bore much of customer anger. Less than a year later, Flipkarts exclusive partnership with Xiaomi is over. Xiaomi's brand is now well known and the company is responding to its buyers' demands by bringing in more handsets. Unfortunately for Flipkart, some of those handsets are also going to competitors, Snapdeal and Amazon. We tried to contact Flipkart to learn if the company expected this to affect demand for the phones on its own site, but got no response.

(Also see: Xiaomi Ends Exclusive Partnership With Flipkart; Adds Snapdeal, Amazon as Partners)

Jain however insists that Xiaomi has faced no pushback from Flipkart. "I want to categorically state that I couldn't possibly be happier with Flipkart," he says.

Instead, Jain says, this decision was driven by feedback from Xiaomi's community in India. "The customers have told us that they want more platforms, and bigger quantities of phones," says Jain, "and that is why we decided to do this. And so we are bringing more phones, not just with Flipkart but with all our partners."

"Each of these platforms has their own audience, and their own community," he adds. "Some people prefer to shop at one instead of the other. They all have their own strengths and their user base. We wanted to enable people to shop freely and openly, which is why we are now selling on all the main e-commerce platforms."

Does this mean that branching out to other e-commerce platforms was always a part of the plan?

"We're still a startup - globally we're just five years old, and in India it's just eight months - and we're still experimenting," says Jain. "The different platforms have their own consumer base, and we wanted to give the consumers the choice."

Free and open consumer choice doesn't mean an end to flash sales yet though.

"Where we see a demand supply disparity, we do a flash sale," he says. "Where there is equilibrium, we do open sales. If you look at it, many of our devices are now available on open sales. But there are some cases, like the Mi Pad, where the demand is enough to convert that open sale into a flash sale anyway, because it sells out too quickly."

At the same time, while Xiaomi is now available on a wide variety of e-commerce platforms, Jain tells us that the company is still committed to launching its own e-commerce store in India as well.

"In January, I'd told you that it will happen in 3-9 months, and that is still the case," Jain says. "We are as much an e-commerce company as we are a phone company. Between May-June and October-November, we'll be launching our own platform as well as continuing to sell via our e-commerce partners."

Apart from online sales, Xiaomi's phones are also available at Airtel retail outlets, and the company recently partnered with The Mobile Store as well. These partnerships amount for only a small number of sales though, which Jain says is the norm for Xiaomi in other countries too.

Hopefully, Xiaomi is able to bring not just more platforms to sell from, but also more units, by that point. Perhaps it can hold one flash sale every alternate day, instead of once a week! Jain readily admits that Xiaomi has not been able to keep up with the demand from India - this has been the case not just for handsets, but also for accessories. He promises though, that addressing this is his top concern.

"Getting more accessories is my second biggest priority now, after getting more phones," he says. "We should be able to permanently solve that soon, and bring some India-specific accessories as well."

Whether Xiaomi will actually be able to bring in devices in the quantities it needs in India is hard to say - we've not seen that happen so far, but after nearly a year of demand it is possible that the company will be willing to bring in larger shipments. If it doesn't, the problems it faced with Flipkart will only grow, as one "Out of stock" sign turns into three.