Xiaomi elevates India head Manu Jain as new VP Global

Chinese consumer electronics giant, Xiaomi has officially announced that Manu Kumar Jain, will be the company's global face.

Manu has been assigned vice president (global operation) position, which will be left vacant by Hugo Barra by the end of this month,  who by the way is moving back to the Silicon Valley to head Facebook's Virtual Reality (VR) division, which also includes Team Oculus.

Read more: After leaving Xiaomi, Hugo Barra to lead Facebook's Oculus VR team

Manu Jain, whilst working as VP (global) to expand Xiaomi's operation in international markets, will also continue to hold the MD (Managing Director) position in India, as well.

Manu Jain elevation doesn't surprise many, as he has done tremendous job in establishing Xiaomi a big smartphone brand in India. The Chinese company, which made its official debut in Jul 2014, has grown steadily since then.

It had a dull business in the second half, but the introduction of the Redmi Note 3 in March-end started to turn things around for Xiaomi. The company followed up with feature-rich phablet Mi Max in July and the budget phone Redmi 3S series in August, last year, which witnessed record sales.

It claimed to have sold more than 2.3 million units in six months (from March to October), which is equivalent to one phone being sold every 7 seconds.

Xiaomi's Redmi 3 (& 3S Prime) series too sold like hot cakes in India. As per the company, it sold more than 3 million units of the budget phone within six months.

Xiaomi also breached other milestones including the fastest company to reach $1 billion revenue within a year (2016). That's a tremendous feat for a company, which set up its business in India just two years ago.

The company recently got crowned as the biggest smartphone seller online in India and it even became one of the top five smartphone makers for the first time in India.

Recently, it launched the new Redmi Note 4 in the country and response from the public has been remarkable so far. Last month, it became the fastest selling online-only phone in India. In its first flash sale conducted simultaneously on Flipkart and mi.com on January 23, more than 250,000 Redmi Note 4 units got sold out in just 10 minutes.

Going at this rate, Xiaomi has a good chance of breaching top 3 spots in Indian smartphone makers list by the end of 2017 and give stiff challenge to board leader Samsung.

With such good success rate in India, Xiaomi is expecting Manu Jain to replicate similar feats in international arena.