As it crossed the $1-billion turnover mark in India, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is planning to increase its manufacturing capacity in India. The company, which outsourced its manufacturing to Foxconn, is presently meeting 75 per cent of its demand from production in India.

“We are planning to increase this further. Sourcing locally has helped us in reducing the time-to-delivery. This has also helped in forecasting demand and getting prepared accordingly,” Manu Jain, India Head of Xiaomi, told BusinessLine.

The two-year-old firm, which started with a few employees, now employs 175. “These are on our payrolls. But indirectly, we employ 3,500 jobs. They work at warehouses, call centre and at the manufacturing facilities,” he said.

The firm runs two call centres in Bengaluru and Indore, with a combined base of 600 employees.

The firm, which used to sell its phones only on online channels, has started offline sales last year.

From under 2,000 outlets in January last year, the number of offline sites went up to 8,500 now. “We would expect the contribution from the offline channel to go up from 25-30 per cent next year from the 10 per cent now,” he said.

Jain was here in connection with the launch of Redmi Note 4 that comes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625 processor and 4,100 mAh battery, which is 25 per cent more than the one in its predecessor Redmi Note 3. The phone in three variants, sold on Mi.com and Flipkart, is priced at ₹9,999, ₹10,999 and ₹12,999.

He said the firm would continue to stick to its policy of launching a few phones in a year unlike its competitors that launch a host of models.

“We believe in launching a small number and doing a great job of giving a good product and good service rather than launching many doing an average job with the products,” he said.