China’s ace phone maker Xiaomi’s announcement that Tata group has invested in the company is a big news. For Tata, the investment is a support for Xiaomi’s indianisation efforts. At the same time, China being the Tata owned JLR’s largest market, the investment is a trust creating one.
The Xiaomi investment thus will better the phone company’s future in India as well as Tata’s future in China.
For most, Xiomi is going to take Samsung in the global market in the coming year. Already, it has emerged as the second largest selling smart phone brand in China, defeating Samsung.
Now, an important event is the launch of Letv video streaming by the smart phone maker. This will make the company more competitive in other market especially in growing areas like India.
For Xiaomi, who has made a big bang India launch in Flipkart, India is going to be very important. First, India is one of the largest market on expansion mode. Second, absence of strong domestic manufactures in the smart phone segment will make things easy for it as the official machinery may go neutral. So, the company is making serious efforts to get acceptability in the government segment by undertaking many changes.
Here, Indianisation will be a real asset for the Chinese phone maker.
For this, Xiaomi is already making big efforts to ‘Indianise’. The Chinese company is planning manufacturing and R and D activities in India to make it as Indian. Its founder CEO, Lei Jun was in Mumbai last week to navigate policies to make Xiaomi as a strong player in the Indian market.
At the same time, Tata’s investment will give it extra mileage in China where it has a plant and is engaged in big competition with other luxury brands. Since the launch of its in Changshu, JV with Chevy motors, JLR is getting tremendous sale in China, giving competition to other luxury car makers – Audi and Benz.
Tata groups growing reputation has made it acceptable to Chinese government as well. In 2014, Ratan Tata was inducted as a Board member in the prestigious Boao Forum which is a Chinese version of World Economic Forum in Davos.
