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Manu Kumar Jain co-founded Jabong.com, a fashion and lifestyle e-commerce portal in India and served as its managing director till January 2014. An IITian, he’s currently the global vice-president of Xiaomi as well as MD of Xiaomi India. In a chat with Suman K. Jha and Avishek Banerjee, he talks about what makes Xiaomi the company it is today. Excerpts:

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Tell us about the journey of Xiaomi so far...

Xiaomi is probably one of the most innovative companies in the world. And perhaps the fastest growing tech company on the planet. The company is only eight years old. Started in April 2010. A lot of people don’t believe we are an eight-year-old company. If you look at most tech startups in India that are big, they are at least 10-12 years old, including some of the biggest names. So we are younger than most tech startups in the country. The company was started by Le Jun, who is the founder, CEO, and chairman of the company. By the time he turned 35, he was already a multi-billionaire coming from a super poor family. And then he retired. And then he said I need to come back and do something differently. So he came back from his retirement eight years ago to start Xiaomi. The most interesting thing is Xiaomi was not started as a smartphone company but as a software or technology company. The simple philosophy was we will build an operating system which is unique, differentiated, has a lot of features that no other Android phones will provide, is very  customisable, and also very user-friendly. So the first one and a half to two years we were just building operating system, not making phones. We started making phones only six to seven years ago.

What is it in the DNA of Xiaomi that explains the kind of rapid expansion the company has undergone in its short existence?