As the managing director who brought smartphone vendor Xiaomi to India in 2014, Manu Kumar Jain was the face of the Chinese-owned company. He even danced in its ad campaigns.
Under Jain, Xiaomi’s rise was swift. It jumped from 6 per cent of India’s smartphone market in 2016 to 27 per cent three years later, beating Indian brands and South Korea’s Samsung and paving the way for other Chinese marques. Today, about three-quarters of India’s market is controlled by Chinese-owned companies.
With Jain the poster boy for India’s mobile phone revolution, Xiaomi says it has sold more than 200mn smartphones in the $38bn revenue market. But that meteoric rise is at risk, with India’s financial enforcement authorities accusing Xiaomi of unlawfully remitting $725mn abroad.