A few years ago, Xiaomi was the most valued Billion Dollar Unicorn at $46 billion before Uber took away that crown. It now plans to go public this year in what could be the biggest tech float.

Xiaomi’s Journey

Beijing-based Xiaomi was founded in 2010 by a group of eight partners who were led by serial entrepreneur Lei Jun. Lei wanted to set up an organization that could provide superior products at affordable prices. It began operations by launching MIUI, its first Android firmware. Its first smartphone Xiaomi Mi1 was released in August 2011. Through lower priced products and regular online flash sales of its phones, Xiaomi became the leading smartphone player in China by 2014. That run, however, didn’t last long.

In mid-2016, Huawei became the market leader with 17.2% share. Rivals Vivo and Oppo ran aggressive campaigns in small towns and saw astronomical growth, pushing Xiaomi to the fourth spot in the Chinese market.

In response, Xiaomi expanded its product line, geographic reach, and sales channels. It plans to build 1,000 Mi Home stores by 2019 and expects $10 billion of retail sales by 2021.

While Xiaomi is still at the fourth spot in 2017, it nearly doubled its share in the fourth quarter of 2017. According to the latest IDC report on the China smartphone market, Xiaomi accounted for 12.4% of the market in 2017, compared with 8.9% in 2016. The company managed to surpass Apple whose share during the same period fell from 9.6% to 9.3%. Huawei continues to top the market with 20.4% while Oppo and Vivo follow with 18.1% and 15.4%, respectively.

Xiaomi has expanded internationally as well. It has seen tremendous success in the Indian market. It recently sold about 250,000 units of its new Redmi Note 4 within minutes of its online launch. It is reported to have crossed $1 billion in Indian revenue for 2016 and it plans to double its investment in India to $1 billion over the next three to five years. The majority of its revenue comes from mid-range price segment of INR 6000-INR 15,000 (~$100-$250), but it has recently forayed into the premium segment. During the fourth quarter, Xiaomi overtook Samsung as the top smartphone vendor and has about 25% of the Indian smartphone market.

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