Indian Economy News

Xiaomi to set up data centre in India by June

New Delhi: Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi said it will set up a data centre in India by June in a bid to address security concerns that the company has intermittently faced in the country, as it announced plans to launch two devices — RedMi 2 and MiPad — within a fortnight.

Xiaomi, which entered India last year, has been planning to set up a local data centre that could incur significant investment, besides setting up a research and development centre and beginning manufacturing smartphones locally for a market that has become its second most important after China. However, the Apple of China has faced concerns about protection of user data, from the Indian Air Force and security solutions provider FSecure.

Xiaomi also partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to migrate data of its international customers to data centres in the US and Singapore in October last year. "We had an infrastructure team coming in from China and they are talking to various people here.

By June, we should have a data centre in place here," Xiaomi vice-president and head of international operations Hugo Barra said at the launch event on Thursday. Barra did not share investment details.

Xiaomi will begin selling the Redmi 2 smartphone and MiPad tablet from March 24 on its exclusive partner site Flipkart, where about 30,000-40,000 units will be put up for flash sale. Having garnered a market share of 3-4% as of December after selling over 1 million smartphones since July 22 last year, Xiaomi is now focusing on setting up its own research and development centre in Bengaluru where, within a year, smartphones' software will be designed and be meant for the Indian market.

While the lease for the R&D centre has been signed, plans for contract manufacturing will take about two years to fructify, company executives had earlier told ET. Xiaomi is believed to be in talks with manufacturing partners Foxconn and Inventec to set up a manufacturing base in India.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

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