Chinese technology company Xiaomi may be a leader in selling power banks in India but its biggest challenger is a fake of the same name.

The company is fighting hard to stop sale of fakes, but the problem continues to hurt, said Manu Jain, Vice-President and Managing Director, Xiaomi India.

For instance, Xiaomi’s power banks come with a unique scratch code. A customer can visit the company’s website and check whether it is a genuine product or not. “We do a lot of such things, but are not able to stop the fake,” he told newspersons.

This is a huge unorganised sector with thousands of people selling fake power banks, he said.

“We have been taking legal actions against some of them.”

Jain was in Chennai to launch Xiaomi’s Redmi 4A, Redmi 4 and Mi Router 3C. He also announced that the company soon plans to open its Mi Home store in Chennai. In May, the first offline store was opened in Bengaluru, and the shop witnessed sale of ₹5 crore within 12 hours, he said.

The company also plans to open stores in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Sale of Xiaomi mobilephones offline is now around 10 per cent. By the year-end, the company plans to take offline sale to around 25 per cent and in 2-3 years, to nearly 50 per cent, he said.

In the first quarter of 2017, the company sold 4 million phones in India as against 1 million a year ago, he said.

On manufacturing, Jain said that in March, Xiaomi announced its second manufacturing unit in partnership with Foxconn at Sri City. With this, the company will now have a combined production capacity of one phone per second during operational hours. With the demand for Xiaomi phones increasing substantially, the company is open to set up a third plant. However, this is too early to talk about, he said. .

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