Xiaomi partners with Redington to broaden offline retail

In a major shift from its online-only strategy, Xiaomi is entering into a tie-up with Redington to distribute its smartphones in brick-and-mortar stores in the offline retail dominated Indian market. The Chinese smartphone maker’s move would make its smartphones available to a much wider consumer base, underlining the importance of the South Asian nation which has become its largest market outside home.

The program will begin on a pilot basis from 10-15 top cities over the next one to two months, starting next week. The model will then be perfected before scaling up to cover all major cities.

Xiaomi has prepared inventory to meet the demand which it expects to surge as a result of selling through physical stores for its value-for-money smartphones offline, but will begin with smaller quantities while keeping prices same across all online and offline retail channels...Read more