Manu Jain appointed VP of Xiaomi

Manu Kumar Jain, a close colleague of Hugo Barra’s in the last few years and the head of Xiaomi’s Indian operations, has just been appointed vice president of Xiaomi. The promotion sees Jain assume the title of vice president of Xiaomi while remaining the managing director of Xiaomi India.

Jain’s performance in India has been exceptional, taking Xiaomi to the number two spot in the sub-continent. But Jain, like Xiang Wang, who replaced Barra as head of Xiaomi’s global operations last month, is not as well known internationally as Barra. That said, Jain’s performance during the company’s expansion into India has made him a very recognizable and respected brand ambassador.

Jain has been with Xiaomi since 2014, before which he co-founded jabong.com, an online retail site as well as a tech startup called Gynger. Xiang was a senior vice president at Xiaomi before Barra’s departure and before that was the president of Qualcomm’s operations in China, which he left in 2015 to join Xiaomi. Barra, who was previously the vp of product development for the Android team, will assume his new post at Facebook this month at the helm of Oculus’ VR efforts.

Note: This post has been updated to clarify Xiang’s succession of the global vp title from Barra. Thanks to Harish for the tip!