I am pretty sure that the Flipkart's claims are just as fake as Apple's claims about so many millions of sales in x amount of time and their web site crashes are also just as doctored as Apple's own. I mean, in both cases, apart from relying on their word for it, who can verify the truth? Maybe Flipkart/Xiaomi are just taking a page of Apples own strategies? We don't know for sure...
But personally, what I find weird is that many people do not find any thing wrong about the folk who are trying to make a big profit buying multiple units of a hard to get retail item and then run an unauthorized retail business of them at 50% or more profit of each unit and without taking any direct or indirect tax liabilities that they ought to taking.
On the other hand, when the company that took the pains to get the item into the market through legit means and at a decent price after paying all the taxes etc, is unable to satisfy the demand either because they are deliberately limiting volumes to generate demand or they genuinely were not able to get enough volumes to cope with the demand, people treat it as an unpardonable sin for which they deserve nothing less than being burnt at the stake.
I don't agree with the way Xiaomi phones are being sold by Flipkart and if you don't like it you don't buy it. But how does one even know that they are doing it deliberately? We are a country with 125 crore population and people here rush to buy anything that that is cheap or bundles something for free. Can a company like Xiaomi's be able to cope with the demand even if they wanted to?
With regard to today's fiasco, they are being accused of misleading customers with bait and switch strategies, but is there anything outright illegal about what they have done/doing? I dare say that most of this is standard business text book stuff that most businesses employ on a regular basis. Not that it makes it aright, but honestly, is there any offline festive season discount sale which is not some sort of old stock clearance or some bait and switch kind of thing?