Xiaomi India Sales Head Deepak Nakra Quits; Set To Join Rival Realme

Deepak Nakra stunned the smartphone market by stepping down as sales head for brick-and-mortar trade of Xiaomi India to join a rival bastion of Realme India as Director Sales. The move was confirmed by Nakra’s LinkedIn profile page. Deepak Nakra’s move to Xiaomi’s rival solidifies Realme’s place in the Indian market. The Oppo’s sub-brand is constantly gaining market share in the Indian market. With smartphones like Realme 3 Pro and Realme C2, the Chinese major is giving sleepless night to rivals like Samsung and Xiaomi.

Realme is planning to establish its company owned offline stores in India through foreign direct investment (FDI) in single brand retail via the automatic route. Nakra is expected to head that front, as per The Economic Times. At present, Vivo and Xiaomi are the two smartphone makers who have taken ownership of their retail operations in the country under retail FDI.

Before being part of Xiaomi, Nakra was handling sales and distribution for South and Western India for Mobiles Division of Samsung. He had joined Samsung India Electronics on January 2016 in Gurgaon. He moved to Xiaomi Technology on December 2017 in the Bengaluru Area.

“He (Nakra) will be looking over the pivotal task of distribution expansion in offline sales management,” Realme India spokesperson told the daily. Realme also plans to officially start six exclusive brick-and-mortar stores in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in the second half of 2019.―Business Today