Xiaomi May Launch More And More Internet Services In India

Xiaomi is dominating the smartphone market in India and it doesn't seem to stop expanding into other segments. Now, the Chinese company is planning to spread out its business from digital payment to music and video streaming platforms. Agree to disagree, it will face up with other opponents like Spotify, Paytm, Netflix and moreover to build up an own ecosystem. From that, Xiaomi internet services will be monetized across the second populous country.

To expand into internet services, Xiaomi will use a remarkable amount of money in the fund that they invested recently. Manu Kumar Jain, India branch director, also stated that the internet services would increase profit for the company, while the hardware and device sales in 2018 just made less than 1% profit margin globally. He admitted that the company found hard to reach a 5% profit margin on those businesses.

Devices, retail, and services are becoming three main financial pillars of Xiaomi around the world. In India, the only business that not be monetized yet actually is services. In view of what we've seen, Xiaomi is handling a big opportunity on growing internet services quickly due to its popularity of Mi devices in India. Jain said the half of their job is nothing but engaging customers with potential internet services. “We are keen to invest in Indian companies and startups in this space to get them into the Xiaomi ecosystem,” Jain said.

Xiaomi now is aiming to gradually gain benefit from service platforms like Mi Video, Mi Music and Mi Drop. While Mi Video and Mi Music are streaming content services, Mi Drop is a file transfer tool that already hit 100 million downloads. At least 40 million users in India accessing Mi Music and Video, which are free by now. The company has recently launched a paid subscription plan as an experience. Another platform called Mi Pay, a UPI-based payment app is expected to generate the money along with its upcoming marketplace feature Mi Credit.

Counted to be over 650 million users by 2023, revenue from streaming platform market might increase from $500 million to $5 billion. This absolutely an abundant market for Xiaomi to pump up those ambitious plans.