Lei Jun’s Internal Letter: Youpin to be Independent as E-Commerce

Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun announced that Youpin, once belonging to Xiaomi Internet of Things (MIoT) team, will become an independent e-commerce department in an internal letter on the night of December 12. Gao Ziguang, former general manager of MIoT, will be vice president of branding integration and the supply chain department, as well as general manager of Youpin.

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The letter also said Xiaomi established an IoT technical committee and Fan Dian will be general manager of MIoT. Both Gao and Fan will report to Liu De, co-founder and vice president of Xiaomi, who is now responsible for its eco-chain enterprise products. Youpin, launched in April, was originally named as Mi Home Youpin. As a smart phone App platform, it aims to connect all incubated Xiaomi products. Since August 16, when it was renamed Youpin, it has transformed into an e-commerce platform. "Youpin has been developing rapidly since its launch in April and is likely to become one of the company's strategic new retail platforms," Lei said in the letter. The new retail channel will be one of Xiaomi's key strategies. On the offline side, Xiaomi has opened more than 300 Xiaomi stores, aiming for 1,000 stores by 2019. Xiaomi said it would introduce more third-party branded merchandise online beside Xiaomi, Mi Home and Xiaomi eco-chain enterprise products.

The following is the full text of Lei Jun's internal letter:

Xiaomi fellows: On November 28, we held the first Xiaomi IoT Developer Conference, which had a great impact on the industry. There are more than 85 million Xiaomi IoT devices, and more than 10 million devices with daily activity. It has become the largest Internet platform in the world. Youpin has been developing rapidly since its launch in April and is likely to become one of the company's strategic new retail platforms. In order to maintain the rapid development of both businesses, we have made the following adjustments to the organizational structure: I. Mi Home Youpin team will be independent from the MIoT team and become Youpin e-commerce department. II. Fan Dian will take assume the position of Gao Ziguang as the general manager of MIoT, reporting to Liu De and being responsible for Xiaomi IoT business and team. As the initiator of Xiaomi's IoT business, Gao Ziguang has driven the business to some scale. We are grateful for his work. III. Xiaomi established the IoT technical committee, with Gao Ziguang as the chairman, and Sun Peng, Fan Dian, Qu Heng, Zhang Yanlu and Peng Chuan as committee members. This appointment will take effect immediately. Lei Jun 12/12/2017 This article originally appeared in Sina Technology and was translated by Pandaily.