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Xiaomi India said it would double the number of touchpoints to 30,000 in India and generate employment for more than 10,000 individuals over the next two years, adding that it will also invest ₹ 100 crore in Mi Retail Academy as a special support for entrepreneurs.
Skill development
The Mi Retail Academy will provide hands-on training and skill development to fresh entrepreneurs and existing retailers – on how to set up the store and manage finances, technical knowledge about the product and services and soft skills required to run a successful business. “We will also support entrepreneurs with expertise in store design and on-ground marketing activities to showcase the store thereby ensuring sales,” Muralikrishnan B, Chief Operating Officer at Mi India, told BusinessLine .
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He said the target is to train entrepreneurs in any town/village that has more than 50,000 people, adding that this would help the company also to grow its stores in each corner of the country.
Muralikrishnan said the entire Mi Retail Academy will be done purely by the Mi India retail team in which there are two parts – online and offline. In the online component it will put a learning management system integrated into the app, and depending on where they are on their learning life cycle, they will have access to adaptive learning modules. For offline, it will hold offline sessions such as bootcamps to help answer all their queries.
“Whenever there is a launch we will also have a session in place to educate their employees. There will be no payment involved from the partners and this is the least Mi India can do to help their (retailers) business grow,” he said.
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As part of the expansion plan, he said the company will also add more ‘Mi Store on Wheels (MiSOW)’ from just one (in Chhattisgarh) right now.
“The entire genesis of this idea was accessibility. The need for a solution similar to MiSOW was the entire lockdown that took place last year. Everyone knows that the biggest growth opportunity in India is going to come from Tier 3-4-5 towns. While we do have the existing Mi Store format catering to tier 1-2-3-4 towns, we wanted to go far beyond,” Muralikrishnan explained.
He further added that in many cities accessibility to a store is 100-150 kms away (one-way travel) and, hence, the company has decided to take the store directly to the consumer.
He said Mi India had seen encouraging results and had sold products across categories – smartphones, power banks, TVs and audio products through the MiSOW.
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