Millet rebirth: Lei Jun dismissed executives, next year or start the IPO, the first 1000 ...

In 2016, Xiaomi’s mobile phone sales fell sharply, and the company’s development also revealed many problems. The concern was not only Lei Jun’s Xiaomi executives and investors behind it, but also Jingdong’s chairman Liu Qiangdong and other partners.

In an internal communication, Liu Qiangdong discussed with senior executives. If Xiaomi had any problems in the end, would there be a major crisis? An executive responded that Xiaomi is short-term pain but will not collapse. An insider of Jingdong revealed to Shenwang that the mobile phone industry Liu Qiangdong paid special attention to three companies - Leshi, Xiaomi and Hammer. Jingdong was the biggest sales channel for Xiaomi mobile phones outside Xiaomi.com.

Also worried about the problem of millet, there are operators. In August 2016, China Mobile, which signed a 30 million-year underwriting agreement with Xiaomi, is also closely monitoring the direction of Xiaomi. A person in charge of China Mobile is also very unsure in mind, worrying that the crisis of the millenium threatens the cooperation between the two sides, because in the past, once a mobile phone company fell, it was often defeated.

Xiaomi's two actions have dispelled the concerns of the person in charge of China Mobile. Recently, he told many of Xiaomi's executives. "In your most difficult time, you actually went out with Xiaomi MIX. This product did not help your sales. Your family is going to open Xiaomi's home, which is very hard and will not help your sales. This is not what a frustrated company will do."

Until July 2017, all the concerns of the partners gradually dispersed with an open letter from Lei Jun. Lei Jun announced in the letter the millet mobile phone second quarter transcripts, single-season shipments 23.16 million units, setting a record high, using data to prove that Xiaomi has reached the bottom. In 2017, Xiaomi also released Xiaomi 6, MIX2 and other products one after another. After one year's trough, the company regained its rightful track.

Lei Jun said that Xiaomi is able to achieve a major reversal. The most critical reason is that the entire company has carried out a full-scale remedial class in 2016. At the R&D and supply chain level, co-founder Zhou Guangping was replaced and Lei Jun personally took charge of it; in terms of channels, President Lin Bin opened stores on a large scale, and launched mass nationals to open stores to attack opponents such as the OV; in terms of internationalization , India's market performance improved, blowing up the "millet whirlwind."

The most important thing is that Xiaomi started the evolution of a startup company to a mature company. Eliminating inappropriate old employees is a problem that almost all successful startup companies will encounter. Xiaomi and Lei Jun have shown enough determination in handling Zhou Guangping’s issues; shifting their focus from successful online business to offline Physical stores and small stores, Xiaomi made changes in the model; entered the Indian market, it has accumulated international confidence.

Wins the crisis like a supply chain crisis

The crisis and reversal of Xiaomi began with Zhou Guangping and the products and supply chains he managed.

On April 6, 2017, the 7th anniversary of the establishment of Xiaomi, millet co-founder and senior vice president Li Wanqiang announced the latest photo of several founders of Xiaomi in a circle of friends. However, it is quite surprising that in the photo, the team of the founder of Xiaomi has changed from the previous 8 people to the 7 people nowadays. The missing one is the chief scientist Dr. Zhou Guangping.

Many people inside Xiaomi said to Tencent Shenzhen. Now Xiaomi has not seen Zhou Guangping. He is nominally the co-founder of Xiaomi, but he is actually not in the company.

A person close to Zhou Guangping told Tencent.com that Zhou Guangping was the oldest of the team of founders of Xiaomi. He is now over 60 years old and his body is not very good, so he retreated to the second line. “Zhou Guangping’s retirement from Xiaomi is something that will happen sooner or later, even though he does not want to leave Xiaomi on his feelings. Xiaomi is the most meaningful thing he has ever done in his life. He will always be one of the founders of Xiaomi.”

Zhou Guangping

On September 8th, Tencent Shenwang transferred to Zhou Guangping himself and Zhou Guangping did not reply to questions about whether to leave. "Millet has rules, and without Ray's approval, I can't communicate with the media without permission." Zhou Guangping did not attend the later millet MIX 2 conference.

According to Tencent's deep network, except that Zhou Guangping’s position has been adjusted, Guo Jun, the vice president who reported to Zhou Guangping and responsible for managing Xiaomi’s mobile phone supply chain, also left in 2016.

Prior to this, the millet supply chain has been criticized by the company and the industry. An industry official told Tencent Shenzhen.com that Guo Jun almost offended Xiaomi’s suppliers before leaving.

In terms of research and development, the team led by Zhou Guangping did not satisfy Lei Jun. A person familiar with Zhou Guangping told Tencent Shenzhen that the Xiaomi mobile phone R&D team led by Zhou Guangping could not keep up with the trend in the second half of 2015. For example, when the red rice Note3 launched the fingerprint recognition, it was too late. Overwhelmed by the poor assessment, the experience is obviously not as good as the music and Meizu released in the same period, the music 1S and Charm Blue Metal.

According to the well-known digital blogger Mocha RQ, on January 15th, 2016, in the VIP room of the Xiaomi annual meeting, in front of numerous millet executives, Lei Jun wearing a red millin shirt was very polite to say to Zhou Guangping. The flagship of 2016 will no longer work well. I will get you closed.

Throughout the year 2015, because of the supply chain, Xiaomi 5 could not publish and eventually dragged it to February 2016. This caused Xiaomi not to complete the established 80 million mobile phone sales target in 2015. Lei Jun is very pissed off. The research and development and supply chain of Xiaomi’s mobile phone is the responsibility of Zhou Guangping.

In 2015, the double eleven, Xiaomi suffered the most difficult battle ever. It was not because of how strong a competitor was or whether there was no interest in online shops, but the delay of Xiaomi 5 was too serious. There was no license in the hands, so they had to use a lot of red rice models to make up the numbers. In order to sell the flagship millet 4 released in 2014, Xiaomi decided to cut the price of this handset by 200-300 yuan.

According to the statistics of third-party comparison software, it is also shown that in the “double 11” one-hour sales break in 2015, Jack Jones and Xiaomi’s discounted efforts were the greatest.

Two hours before the end of “Double 11′′, the Xiaomi team looked at the same data as Huawei and temporarily decided to issue a 50-yuan mobile coupon for each user. Just buy the mobile phone at the Tmall flagship store and it will be used. To a certain extent, Xiaomi helped increase sales at the last minute.

A middle millet told Tencent Shenwang that on the night of the Tmall Twins, a senior female manager surnamed Zhu, who was responsible for the double-eleven-supervising battle, cried out directly at the scene, because the fight was too terrible. Fortunately, Xiaomi eventually won the first volume of mobile phone sales, while the total sales of mobile phones were won by the company.

After the release of millet 5, it once again suffered a capacity crisis. A millet co-founder and Tencent Shenzhen.com talked about the situation at the time and said that Xiaomi 5 had a very good evaluation after its release, but he could not buy the goods within two or three months. He jumped anxiously and jumped.

Sure enough, after Xiaomi 5 was released three months later, Lei Jun’s internal letter on Zhou Guangping’s post adjustment came down, and the old saying “Let you go to retreat” became a success.

According to sources, the supply chain team led by Zhou Guangping, who is directly responsible for Guo Jun, has caused a lot of trouble for Xiaomi. Lei Jun has not moved the idea, but some things have left Lei Jun intolerable, including Xiaomi offending Samsung Semiconductor. .

Prior to the release of Xiaomi 5, a high-level Samsung Semiconductor China team took the team to meet the Xiaomi supply chain team that Guo Jun was responsible for. During the on-site PPT speech, because of Xiaomi’s poor attitude, Samsung was also very strong. Both parties took part in the scene. Very fierce dispute, directly took the table, the Samsung stood up and left. This is probably the reason for the next series of events: Samsung AMOLED screen shipments during that time is very large, but not to supply millet.

In July 2016, after Lei Jun took over the supply chain and personally visited Samsung headquarters, it was widely understood that he was requesting Samsung to supply the screen. A source familiar with the supply chain analyzed that Lei Jun is likely to personally go to Samsung to apologize and hope that the other party will supply the screen. “Samsung Semiconductor has a good reputation in the industry and is very strong. Usually it is whoever wants to rule.”

A source not confirmed by the Lei Jun himself claimed that Lei Jun actually went to Samsung headquarters not once, but four times. He had to Samsung for the first three times.

Untrustworthy supplier, Lei Jun dismissed executives

Several people who met with Lei Jun said that although Lei Jun was relatively savvy in some places, it was a relatively atmospheric person. He also knew the importance of team stability and generally would not easily take the team into action.

Tencent deep network and several high-level exchanges between the millet found that Lei Jun’s employment strategy is to value people more, not to look at the experience, often arranging a management staff to do the fields that he had never been involved in before, which contributed to a large extent, Xiaomi Today's status.

It is hard to imagine that Xiaomi’s Internet marketing model was actually created by Li Wanqiang who was originally of design. Today, the “Iron Lady” Zhang Jianhui, who manages Xiaomi’s home, was Xiaomi’s aftermarket general manager.

However, such employment strategy will also bring some mistakes. Zhou Junping’s main partner, Guo Jun, is an example. Tencent Shenzhen.com learned from a person familiar with Xiaomi that Guo Jun had a working background in government departments. The earliest entry into Xiaomi was responsible for network licensing, government relations, etc. Later, Lei Jun was appointed to be responsible for the supply chain.

Before the Spring Festival in 2015, it is the mobile phone industry's most busy time of year. A Japanese mobile phone material supplier has calculated that this is the best time to visit Chinese customers and it will fly to Beijing. Outside the office of Xiaomi Technology CEO Lei Jun, the supplier arrived at the agreed time, but waited for a full 3 hours. Although he did not express his dissatisfaction with Lei Jun, he had accumulated a lot of grievances.

A few days later, this supplier met the CEO of the hammer technology Luo Yonghao as scheduled. The strong contrast made this supplier feel the arrogance of Xiaomi and he did not hold back to complain to some people in the industry.

Informed sources told Tencent Shenzhen that Xiaomi was sloppy and Japanese suppliers had little to do with Lei Jun, mainly due to the direct executors. Xiaomi was responsible for the connection with the Japanese supplier. He was the vice president of Xiaomi’s mobile phone supply chain. Unlike Qian Chen, the head of the hammer technology supply chain at that time, Guo Jun did not consider how important the supplier was. In her mind, Xiaomi was a Party A company and the supplier was a Party B company.

A supply chain source told Tencent Shenzhen that there was a supplier conference held by Xiaomi. The senior management of the supplier did not wear the clothes made by Xiaomi at the site and went to the photo session of the assembly. Guo Jun was very angry after seeing it. The individual boomed. Since then, these suppliers have refused to meet with Guo Jun.

Zhou Guangping is also very personal. He is not sleek enough to be able to live in harmony within. A person who had worked with Zhou Guangping told Tencent.com, Zhou Guangping was a proud man who liked to discuss issues with a threat of arrogance. This happened several times in Motorola. Once, Xiaomi had an internal meeting to discuss the problems in the mobile phone supply chain. Lei Jun asked why OPPO and vivo could not do Xiaomi in the supply chain. As a result, Zhou Guangping returned with a scurry: “Then you go to OV’s people. "The whole scene was very awkward.

In Xiaomi, if there are disagreements between Lei Jun and other senior executives, Lei Jun will stick to his point of view. "There is no need to fight this matter, listen to me, wait until you reach my height and fight again." The founder Wang Chuan and Lei Jun eat together, Wang Chuan suggested that the price of millet MIX is set at 9999 yuan, but Lei Jun still insisted on set at 3999 yuan, "Why you are all persuading me to increase prices, I feel very lonely."

However, Zhou Guangping sometimes did not spare, so Lei Jun did not step down. At the beginning of Xiaomi's business, the two had once participated in a micro-forum event organized by the media. Lei Jun slammed the test on the hard floor and went back and was criticized by Zhou Guangping.

So many things happened before and after, beyond the limits of the patience of Lei Jun. According to news from the supply chain, Zhou Guangping and Lei Jun clashed with each other and used the table tennis room to play table tennis during office hours, making it impossible for suppliers to come to Xiaomi to have a meeting. “It feels like demonstrating to Lei Jun.”

In the end, Lei Jun had to choose to leave Zhou Guangping.

New recruits

After Zhou Guangping was replaced, Lei Jun personally managed the R&D and supply chain. However, as an outsider, he still needed to directly manage R&D and supply chain helpers. At this time, he thought of Zhang Feng, the founder of millet technology company (millet mobile power manufacturer).

In 2010, Zhang Feng, the senior executive of Inventec, was one of the few foundries who were willing to provide OEM services for Xiaomi's mobile phones. In other words, when Lei Jun needed help most of the time, Zhang Feng extended his help. In 2012, when Zhang Feng wanted to leave the company, Lei Jun was the first to invest.

In the second half of 2016, Zhang Feng became a “disposal shopkeeper” at Purple Rice Technology, formally entered Xiaomi's management supply chain, and assisted Lei Jun in solving the problems of millet supplier components and mobile phone supply.

Earlier this year, Zhou Guangping’s former subordinate and original Xiaomi’s R&D director Yan Kesheng was promoted to vice president and managed R&D. “Zhou Guangping is an extreme person, but Yan Kesheng has a high emotional intelligence. In Xiaomi, when Zhou Guangping is extreme, Yan Kesheng can act as a balancer,” said one person familiar with Yan Kesheng.

In terms of supply chain, compared with Guo Jun, Zhang Feng also understands the importance of win-win. A senior millet employee disclosed to Tencent Shenzhen that Zhang Feng once said at a closed-door meeting inside Xiaomi that he had lost money to help Kyocera Corp. to produce a mobile phone, which provoked his boss to be very uncomfortable. Later, Kyocera knew not only that all the The business was handed over to Inventec, which did not mention price reductions when the cost of the industry fell sharply, allowing Inventec to make more returns based on previous losses. Later, Zhang Feng left the company and the cooperation between the two sides also stopped.

A supply chain source told Tencent Shenzhen that when Zhang Feng was still working at Inventec several years ago, the head of the hardware of an international company had taken business to Nanjing to visit him. Zhang Feng did not send a special car to pick it up. They did not pull banners or find people to line up for welcome. Instead, they personally received and started talking without PPT. The person in charge of the hardware felt that Zhang Feng's personality was very appetite and neither haughty nor humble.

It is reported that Zhang Feng's office is now called "gym" in Xiaomi's office. In his eyes, supply chain management is like going to a “gym”. It takes money to build a fitness card. It takes time to go to the gym. The business seems to be losing, but the body (production line) is exercised. The whole person (company) More healthy.

After Zhang Feng took office, Xiaomi's supply chain has indeed been improved. One of the most intuitive data is that from January 1 to August 31, 2016, Sina Weibo’s Weibo “xiaomi monkeys” has 40 pages of Weibo, and in the same period in 2017, only 15 pages of Weibo with the same keywords, It is 62% less than a year ago.

A supply chain source said that to manage the supply chain, the most important thing is not the price but the strategy. Among them, it is very important how to deal with suppliers well. "Before mobile phone R&D was designed, you were Party A; but when the mobile phone was designed for mass production, you were a Super Party B and often had to be led by the supplier. For example, the supplier's materials were limited and everyone In the rush, whether it is for Huawei, OV, or Xiaomi, whoever allocates more and whom are less likely to be linked to each other.”

Product R&D is also closely linked to the supply chain. A product in the R & D stage, to a large extent, determines the difficulty of its volume production. Millet MIX initially used an all-ceramic fuselage. This ceramic production was small in itself, coupled with very low yields, so MIX could only initially be a concept machine that was difficult to mass-produce. However, after one year's MIX2, the side frame of the standard version of the MIX2 was replaced with 7-series aluminum, which substantially increased the yield rate and finally achieved mass production.

On September 11, Xiaomi MIX2 was released in Beijing. During the entire conference, Lei Jun publicly praised the two Xiaomi colleagues. These two people are Zhang Feng and Yan Kesheng.

Eco Chain Supply Xiaomi Home

In 2016, Xiaomi's make-up class is an important link in addition to the supply chain and offline channels. Prior to this, Xiaomi had realized that the proportion of online mobile phone sales was only 1/3 of the line, and it must be considered offline. However, Lei Jun discovered that Xiaomi's previous cost-effective model made it impossible to learn OPPO and vivo to open stores in the country.

However, Lei Jun's good luck is reflected here, he had an unintentional intervention, can be said to have done in one fell swoop to the millet house offline store mode.

Little is known to the outside world that the earliest supply chain of Xiaomi’s mobile phone was led by design co-founders Liu De and Zhou Guangping. At that time, Liu De was always in a very busy state. He often needed to go to the country due to lack of hardware background. All around to seek supply chain partners, "incomparable pain."

Zhou Guangping’s personality is too strong, and the supply chain itself is not what Liu De is good at, so Liu De withdrew from supply chain management in early 2012. According to reports from Lei Feng, from the time of handing over the supply chain to the end of 2013, besides grasping the design of some mobile phone peripheral products and participating in some high-level decisions, he has almost nothing to do and is very embarrassing. Xia Yongfeng, Xiaomi’s vice president of ecological chain, even jokingly said: “At that time, Deco went home crying after Xiaomi’s work.” After learning of this situation, Lei Jun felt that he should give Liu De something to do. The millet ecological chain investment.

Millet layout offline channels, first of all need the cost of the store, in the case of guaranteeing the line to sell mobile phones without increasing the price, how to share the cost becomes a problem that must be resolved. Since the rental of Xiaomizhijia is fixed, only the sales per square meter in the store is high enough to spread this cost.

The job of the Xiaomizhijia team is to do a flat sales (ie, sales per square meter). To do this, we must work hard on the “how many people enter the store” and “how high the conversion rate”.

If Xiaomi's home is only a pure mobile phone shop, it can hardly survive. Because people generally have to change a mobile phone for more than a year, this means that they will not often enter mobile phone shops. This is also a problem that both OPPO and vivo face.

However, because there are dozens of ecological chain companies invested by Liu De, the number of people entering the store has already been resolved. Xiaomi ecological chain companies can provide bracelets, charging treasures, balance cars, electric toothbrushes, sweeping robots and many other hardware devices, so that Xiaomi's home not only sells mobile phones, so many people can enter the store once in a week or two. Because of the high frequency of entering the store, it will eventually prop up the flow of the store.

Xiaomi's home does not rely on the high gross profit of a single product, but rather on selling a lot of low-margin products. According to official data released by Xiaomizhijia, the average number of customers who enter the store at the moment is 2.6.

It is reported that the products produced by Xiaomi's ecological chain companies need to pay a certain percentage of the fees to Xiaomi when Xiaomi.com sells them. This is also true of Xiaomi's home. As long as these ecological chain products make money, it is expected to share the cost of the storefront.

An internal employee of millet eco-chain enterprise Huami Technology disclosed to Tencent Shenzhen that Huami is responsible for the production of millet bracelets. Xiaomi is responsible for sales in multiple channels. Under normal circumstances, the two parties are divided into five groups according to their profits after removing costs. .

On the evening of July 31 this year, the millet’s headquarters building was brightly lit. Xiaobin’s president Lin Bin and Xiaomi’s homeowner Zhang Jianhui held a celebration for the team. This month, Xiaomi’s home sales exceeded RMB 500 million for the first time.

However, even if Xiaomi House breaks the record monthly sales of 500 million yuan, the total sales of 6 billion yuan a year is relatively small, and the annual turnover of nearly 100 billion yuan is also a cup of water, so the team is accelerating the speed of opening a store. On May 28, 2017, during the Lunar New Year Dragon Boat Festival, Lin Binfei flew to Shanghai to attend the opening ceremony of the 100th millet home. Two months later, on July 22nd, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi had opened 159 millet homes.

Xiaomi co-founder Wang Chuan told Tencent Shenzhen.com that the top three channels for Xiaomi TV are Xiaomi, Jingdong and Tmall, respectively, but the emergence of Xiaomi’s home is rapidly breaking this pattern. It is expected that the first quarter of next year will be the most In the second quarter of late next year, Xiaomi's home will surpass the above three to become the largest sales channel for Xiaomi TV.

From rice noodle to small shop

In the discussions between Lei Jun and Xiaomi executives, Xiaomi's home will only open up to 2,000 or so, and OPPO and vivo have more than 200,000 domestic stores. It is difficult for Xiaomi's home to really infiltrate into the heart of OV to compete with them. . As a result, a brand new retail model is being emphasized by Xiaomi.

Xiaomi tried to mobilize the majority of rice flour groups in China and let them help Xiaomi sell products in the county towns or townships. He still insisted on the same price online and offline. Xiaomi would eventually pay rice flour according to sales. Xiaomi called this model Xiaomixiaoxiao. shop".

It is reported that at present, the income structure of Xiaomi's shop is mainly divided into two parts: each single product has a separate income; when the sales amount reaches 1-2 million yuan, it can get 3% of the commission, and the sales amount reaches 2-5 million yuan. The percentage of commissions rose to 4%, and the percentage of sales exceeding 50,000 yuan rose to 5%.

Suining is a county seat in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province. The owner, Tian Shuo, has sold nearly 400 pieces of millet products here. In the first half of this year, Tian Shuo became the owner of the millet store after experiencing online learning and assessment. At the beginning, Tian Shuo was confused, and only in the WeChat circle of friends and relatives and friends WeChat group propaganda, soon discovered that the online publicity effect was not good, so he began to downstairs in the community.

The first set up stalls, many people pass by in the community, but are willing to come and buy less people, Tian Shuo went to buy a sphygmomanometer to the elderly for the elderly voluntary blood pressure, passenger traffic is actually a few times larger than before. However, after a period of stalling, Tian Shuo found that the purchasing power of the community was limited and the significance of the stall was not significant. Tian Shuo also found a good stall in the local pedestrian street, which has today's sales.

Tencent Shenzhen.com once participated in an online live training of the Xiaomi shop. Xiaomi staff said that because of the high cost of opening a store, they do not want Xiaomi shopkeepers to open stores. In addition, Xiaomi's shop adopts “three red lines and two bans” prohibiting price changes, prohibiting cross-regional sales, prohibiting malicious scans, prohibiting resale in stores or online channels, and prohibiting leakage of revenue information. For example, in order to identify whether the store owner cross-regional sales, Xiaomi will determine through the background data analysis of the activation of the equipment sold by the store and the active area.

In the official training materials, Xiaomi's history put forward for the first time "to look at issues from the perspective of the operators, rather than from the user's point of view," such as encountering different sources of different channels, promotional policies, etc., not complaining why not the same, Instead, I have a chance to see if I have any leverage.

Xiaomi shop also introduced the credit system for the first time. The future supply and income of the shopkeeper will be differentiated according to different credit ratings. Hot products such as Xiaomi 6 will be distributed according to the credit rating. The higher the credit, the higher the probability of obtaining hot products.

Xiaomi counted an account for the owner. If each owner can serve 1,000 families, of which 200 are core users, the average annual household consumption is 10,000 yuan, and annual sales of at least 2 million yuan each year are already far away. We surpassed annual sales of general store.

In order for the shop owner to increase sales, Xiaomi hopes that the shop owner must first purchase as much as possible. At one time, he adopted a well-recognized strategy—all the benefits of the shop owner can only be converted into rice beans, but the rice beans can not be discounted, only to use In stock. In a complaint, Xiaomi had to stop this strategy.

Tencent deep network survey found that the difference between the sales performance of different millet store owners, a lot of people did not really promote the millet products after the shop opened, nearly half of the store has become a "zombie shop." Lei Jun in Henan Province visited Xuchang County in Henan this year and the millet store in the county only sold more than 60 pieces of millet products.

In Lichuan, a county-level city in the western part of Hubei Province, there are three Xiaomi shops in the county, and the owner Huang Chungao has sold 860 items, but the other two shopkeepers have not sold a single item.

In Tian Shuo's Jiangsu Province, Suining County, in addition to selling nearly 400 pieces of millet products, the other two store owners also sold only 20 products.

However, Xiaomi’s store is still a force that cannot be ignored. Since this model was launched for six months, cumulative sales have exceeded 700 million yuan. In September, Xiaomi’s small store averaged an additional daily sales of about 20 million yuan, which is comparable to Xiaomi's home, whose monthly sales just exceeded 500 million yuan.

Indian Whirlwind

Among the executive team of Xiaomi official website, the last one is Manu Jiayin, general manager of Xiaomi India, and a pure overseas background executive of Xiaomi’s only vice president.

Hugo Barra, who is currently responsible for VR business on Facebook, was another pure overseas background executive of Xiaomi. He left the position of Global Vice President of International Business at the beginning of this year. After returning to Silicon Valley, in addition to planning to bring some of Xiaomi's practices to Facebook, Hugo also often told friends in private that the pace of Chinese companies was too fast and complained that Xiaomi's work was too tired in the past three years.

The early investor of millet and Tong Shihao, managing partner of GGV Jiyuan Capital, told Tencent Shenzhen that in the three years of Xiaomi, the entire world outlook has changed. He realized that whoever is more hungry and moves faster will be more likely to win. .

However, a person close to the senior level of Xiaomi pointed out to Tencent Shenzhen. Hugo did not make much substantial contribution in Xiaomi, causing Lei Jun and Lin Bin to be very unhappy. "Hugo was dug up by Lin Bin and they knew before when they were at Google."

In contrast, Lei Jun was quite satisfied with Manu Jain's performance. He really let the millet model land in India, and his sales performance has been leaping forward. Even if the entire millet was at its lowest level in 2016, India could also receive a good report. .

Two latest data on Xiaomi's India business: Lei Jun disclosed in an internal letter in July that Xiaomi’s performance in India in the first half of 2017 increased by 328% year-on-year, ranking second only to Samsung in market share; the IDC report showed that in 2017 In the second quarter, Red Rice's Note 4 shipped more than 2 million units, making it the single most-season smartphone in India's smartphone market.

It can be said that Manu is an Indian with built-in "MIUI." He is a sturdy, bald head with a white complexion and looks energetic. Earlier in the two-hour exchange with Tencent Shenzhen.com in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, millet headquarters, Xiaomi's expertise in the Internet model, cost-effective play, online and offline strategies, etc., all turned into his "philosophy" millet mouth. (Philosophy) flows out.

Over the past few years, Xiaomi has not surpassed the entire overseas market. The Brazilian market has already withdrawn. Slow progress has been made in many markets, and the Indian region has performed the best. Manu, who is based in India, flies to Beijing every quarter to report his progress to Lei Jun.

For example, "We are India's shortest company with annual sales of US$1 billion," and "Mi Xiao is not only a mobile phone company, but an Internet company." "In the past 15 years, no great company has ever achieved marketing promotion." Such expressions are highly consistent with Xiaomi’s discourse formulation system in China. Only when asked some sensitive questions will Manu smile and think again for a while before presenting a typical Indian style.

In July 2014, Xiaomi decided to go to India when he was in the middle of the country. “When the first batch of millet 3 mobile phones were released, many people said that we could not succeed in India. There are two reasons. First, at the time, all other mobile phones were over 90%. It is offline sales. Second, other companies spend a lot of money on marketing.” Manu told Tencent Shenzhen. “However, Xiaomi spent only a small amount of money on marketing and insisted on only online sales. ”

The first batch of millet 3 was purchased with 10,000 units and 350,000 people came to grab it. Xiaomi first brought “hunger marketing” to India. The excellent price/performance ratio and Internet demographic dividend have made Xiaomi a new record in India. Taste the sweet millet India team, trying to integrate the fan economy into Indian culture. The employee joked that when Xiaomi harvested 1 million fans, he would promote Manu to the swimming pool to celebrate.

Manu will often visit Mr. Tata, who is known as "Li Ka-shing of India." Tata has strong political and business resources on the upper floors of India. Through the introduction and coordination of Manu, Tata has invested in Xiaomi. In March of this year, Lei Jun was interviewed by Indian Prime Minister Modi. Some analysts speculate that this is a manifestation of Manu’s personal resources and capabilities.

The problem left for Xiaomi now is that it is necessary to do a good job of laying out the line before OV can lay down offline channels in India. In China, the Internet mobile phone model has reached the ceiling after experiencing rapid growth for four or five years, and Xiaomi has to open a large number of millet homes offline.

In the face of offensive offensive offensive line, Manu said that Xiaomi has three main strategies. First, he continues to work with Amazon to launch new products. Second, he continues to make India Xiaomi. Third, Xiaomi intends to actively expand offline channels. Open millet home.

Next year or start IPO

Li Nan, Meizu’s senior vice president who predicted that Xiaomi will re-emerge in 2017, told Tencent Shenzhen that last year’s line of OVs was invincible, but this year’s smart phone winners in China will be Internet mobile phones. "The biggest winner in the first half is glory. The biggest winner in the second half of the year will be Xiaomi."

As the Chinese market returned to its peak, the Indian market achieved rapid growth, and Xiaomi returned to the top five global mobile phone sales. At this time, landing the capital market is undoubtedly a good time node.

Although millet officials have stated that they do not have a timetable for listing, according to Tencent’s exclusive information, this summer, when a co-founder of the millet personally dig a tech company executive to work with Xiaomi, in order to show sincerity, a Executives revealed that Xiaomi’s internal decision was to start the IPO in the first half of next year.

In order to wait for this day, many Xiaomi employees have been suffering for several years. As we all know, millet’s salary is low, and the annual salary increase rate is also relatively small. Personal finance can only hope for the option shares in the hands of the person.

A middle millet tells Tencent Shenzhen that the health of Xiaomi employees can be roughly judged based on the job number. If nothing else happens, the former 100 employees may become billionaires in the future, and the first 1000 employees may become multimillionaires in the future. .

But before everything is settled, these are just good imaginations. In the past year, Xiaomi’s growth was not unrelated to the poor performance of competitors such as LeTV, Coolpad, Meizu, and Hammer. Millet's huge shipments also rely mainly on the positioning of low-end 1,000 yuan machine red rice, still facing a lot of competitive pressure in the high-end market. Millet's offline channel is still in the input period, and it is difficult to have an immediate effect in the short term. Whether it can stabilize the current growth momentum and ensure the volume production and success of Xiaomi MIX2, it is the next big problem that Lei Jun faces after the rebirth of Xiaomi.