Manu Kumar
Jain, for a few, could be a name that has been heard for the first time but a
well-known name for corporate and tech people. His incredible journey started, from being the first employee of Xiaomi India to Managing Director and Global Vice
President is unbelievable in many ways.
He completed
his B. Tech from IIT Delhi in 2003 and pursued MBA in Management from ESCP
Business School in 2006.
When Jain thought
of leaving McKinsey and starting his fashion brand or a tech start-up, many
friends and colleagues joked about him as the year was 2011 and online
fashion shopping was not a big thing then in India.
In January 2012,
Arun Chandra Mohan, Praveen Sinha, Lakshmi Potluri, and Manu Jain started
Fashion and Lifestyle e-commerce portal Jabong.com.
Those days,
it was an early phase for e-commerce, and everyone did not use big-screen
smartphones for shopping; just then, Jain thought that a big-screen smartphone
would be the next big thing in India.
Xiaomi got
to know about his quest for smartphones and hired him in 2014, giving him the big
responsibility of bringing Xiaomi to India and starting its business in India.
He used to
carry over 30 smartphones in his bag to test features and compare with
competitors. The company started its operations with one person, Manu Kumar
Jain, in a small room with just six team members.
Between founding Jabong and becoming the Managing Director of Xiaomi India, he also became a Board Member of other organizations such as KrazyBee and Hungama.
With the
hard work and dedication of Manu Jain, Xiaomi is the biggest and
most popular smartphone brand in India and has held the position for the last
three years. It is also at the top across multiple products like Smart TVs,
fitness wearables, and Power Banks in India.
He also had
an interest in cartoon characters. So, he co-created a cartoon series named "DINK couple," inspired by his real-life experiences, in December 2012 in
Bangalore.
He has
featured in Fortune and Economic Times 40 under 40 lists. Manu Jain received
top executives under 40 awards from Business Today, GQ's 50 most influential
young Indians by GQ. Forbes India awarded him as Best CEO of the year 2019.
