To keep up with the rising demand, Chinese handset maker Xiaomi is planning to set up its manufacturing plant in India by the next calendar year. Talking to The Pioneer Xiaomi India head Manu Jain pointed out that they are trying to build Indian company. "We want to set up our manufacturing plant in India probably in 2016," he added.
The company referred to as 'China's Apple' is also planning to bring televisions by the end of this year and plans to launch its own e-commerce portal. "We will continue to focus on digital side, especially on social media," he said. The company, which entered India last year, was in news after the Indian Air Force and security solutions provider F-Secure raised concerns about data protection of user data.
"We had an infrastructure team coming in from China and they are talking to various people here. By June, we should have a data centre in place here," said Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra. Though he declined to comment on the investment details, the data centre would be one of the significant investments the company is making in India.
Following global concerns about security of user data hosted on servers in China, the company partnered Amazon Web Services (AWS) to migrate data of its international (non-Chinese) customers to centres in the US and Singapore in October last year.
The Redmi 2 is a successor to Xiaomi's Redmi 1S launched last year. Priced at Rs 6,999, the device will compete with 4G devices available in the market -- Moto E (2nd gen), lenovo A6000, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G (Rs 9,999) and Yu Yureka (Rs 8,999).
Featuring a 4.7-inch display, the dual SIM Redmi 2 has a 1GB RAM and supports both TDD and FDD types of 4G services (high speed Internet) on both SIM slots. It also has 8MP rear and 2MP front cameras, 2,200 mAh battery and 8GB memory (expandable up to 32GB).
"We will put about 30,000-40,000 devices for sale in the first round on March 24. We will also bring in a limited version of Redmi 2 soon featuring 2GB RAM and 16GB memory, but that will take some time," Barra said.