Huga Barra, VP for international operations had earlier indicated that he wanted to expand Xiaomi's operations to India. Barra, also joined Xiaomi only in late 2013, and before that he was a high ranking executive with Google's Android team, often seen launching new versions of the operating system.
The company is known to sell its smartphones via its own online store and introduces its products in batches. In China, Xiaomi smartphone batches get sold out within hours.
Xiaomi is known to sell its phones at almost cost with high-end components from vendors like Qualcomm, Sony, JDI and LG. It normally makes its money by cutting out the middle man in the retail channel and offers a suite of services including a cloud based drive, an app store through which it makes money.
It will be interesting to see if this strategy works in India as unlike China, the Google Play Store is not blocked, and Google's services will be available in India.
The smartphone maker is also known for its custom Android interface known as MIUI, which abandons the standard Android app drawer for a springboard of applications and widgets much like iOS used on the iPhone and iPad.
