Xiaomi, the Chinese company that last year made the headlines for becoming the world’s largest Android smartphone seller, has launched a cross border e-commerce application. This application is named ShareSave and is meant to allow people outside China to access the products that are available only to Chinese citizens.
The first country to avail the facilities of ShareSave is India, Xiaomi’s largest market after China. The application is only available on Android’s Google Play as of now. The service will be extended to more nations in the future as this is a global initiative.
ShareSave, as the name of the app suggests, is based on the mantra that customers share the products with their friends and family and save money on the purchase. It allows the customers to take three routes in this share and save model.
The first is an exact copy of the tried and tested model of Pinduoduo, based on social e-commerce where the buyer shares the product with his or her contacts. He or she gets the specified discount as soon as he successfully ‘pairs-up’ with the required number of people by convincing them to buy that exact product on the same app.
Also Read: With 300 mn+ users and $38 Bn annual GMV, China’s Pinduoduo is bigger than Indian e-tail
The second model is called Drop. In this service, customers choose a product from the select list and share it with their contacts. With every friend joining in, the price of the products drops a certain amount, until it reaches a target price. When that happens, the customer gets the product for free or for 50 per cent discount.
The third share and save model is where the customer makes a small initial payment on the price of the product. When it is sufficiently funded to match the price by the contribution of other users, the customer gets rewards in form of shopping vouchers worth ten times the initial investment.
If a user is uninterested in making these special purchases, he or she can also opt to buy the product at the listed price outrightly.
The products offered on this application, however, do not include laptops or smartphones. Instead, 132 million connected devices. These lifestyle products like electric toothbrush, precision screwdriver, Yeelight etc have been procured from over 100 Internet of Things companies that Xiaomi has partnered with. Some of these companies have been incubated by the tech product giant itself.
The company promises to offer efficient doorstep delivery of quality products at honest prices.
In India, this application would be one of a kind and is expected to enjoy the first mover’s advantage for quite some time. Not to forget, the reputation Xiaomi has gathered in the country with its Mi products. It has successfully become the largest Android-run-smartphone seller in the country.
Going further, it would be interesting to see how this affects the Indian Internet-of-things and e-commerce segment and how far the #ShareToSave mantra works for the Indian population.
The information has been sourced from NDTV and the application itself.
