【Watch When the Camellia Blooms Online】

Xiaomi took India by storm when it entered the country with its low-cost and Watch When the Camellia Blooms Onlinedurable smartphones in 2014. In the two years since, it has become one of the largest online smartphone sellers in India. But as it looks at expanding its presence in the country, the Chinese company is increasingly eyeing the good ol’ brick and mortar stores.

Over the weekend, Xiaomi launched a new smartphone called the Redmi 3S+ for the Indian market. Priced at Rs 9,499 ($148), the mid-range Redmi 3S+ is company's first smartphone to be sold exclusively through offline retailers and distributors in India. The phone is available to purchase from more than 7,500 retailers including Poorvika, Sangeetha, BIG C, and LOT mobiles, Xiaomi said.

The move marks a big deviation for the company, which has until recently relied exclusively on online stores for selling its phones in India. But if the company wants to expand its presence in the country, it cannot overlook the offline market. Seven out of 10 phones sold in India are bought at offline retail stores, Tarun Pathak, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research told Mashable India.

Xiaomi’s growing focus on offline retailers is also its retaliation against other Chinese players like Huawei and Oppo who use a mix of offline and online channels for selling their smartphones in India. Lenovo, which fights with Xiaomi for the top position among online sellers in the country, also has a deep offline presence in India, for instance.

India has always been a big market for Xiaomi, but it has become especially important with the company struggling to keep up pace in its home market. The company’s phones haven't been selling as fast in China as they used to once. During the period between April and June this year, for instance, Xiaomi sold 38 percent fewersmartphones in China than it did during the same period last year. So naturally, as the company faces new competition in its home market, it is looking at India and other nations where it operates for further growth.

Its focus to boost its offline efforts also illustrates company’s attempt to fight for the seventy percent of the market that it previously didn’t even cater to. “They need to scale up. For the past few quarters they have been stuck at a million per quarter sales,” Pathak added. “A mix of offline vs online as a channel strategy should be beneficial for Xiaomi. It needs to invest in cities and other areas such as UP, North east, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, where smartphone penetration is picking up.”

Xiaomi realizes that and it has been steadily stitching together the pieces to sell phones in India through offline chains. Over the past year, the company has tied-up with Redington, Innocomm and Just Buy Live offline big chain retailers among others. The company’s recent phones including the Redmi Note 3, Mi 5, and Redmi 3S are available in the offline market through these chains.

Moving forward, the company tells Mashable Indiait will make all its future phones available in the offline market as well. The company reaffirmed that it aims for a 70 to 30 ratio for sales through online and offline retailers respectively. "Currently, 90 per cent of our sales in India are online and the remaining is offline. In steady state, in China, it is a 70-30 (online-offline) split," Manu Kumar Jain, head of Xiaomi India had said last year.