Twelve years after it sold its first phone in India, Xiaomi has decided that the next decade of its business here sits in the living room rather than the pocket. On 7 August the company introduced Mijia by Xiaomi as its home and lifestyle sub-brand for the market, placing it alongside Xiaomi, REDMI and POCO in the India portfolio, with an air purifier as the first product due this quarter and large appliances queued behind it. India's smartphone shipments fell between 10 and 13 per cent year on year in the June quarter depending on which tracker you read, the sharpest June-quarter contraction since the pandemic, and the memory shortage behind it has priced Xiaomi out of the tier it built its Indian business on. Mijia is the hedge.Delhi's rain moved the meeting. What had been set as an in-person conversation collapsed onto a video call, and Sudhin Mathur, Chief Operating Officer at Xiaomi India, arrived on screen with the manner of a man who has run this market's phone business from four chairs before this one. Seven years at Sony Ericsson, where he helped set the brand up in India. Two years running LG's mobile business here. A stint as Lenovo's mobile country head, then a year as managing director of Motorola Mobility India.About The AuthorAt heart, I am a storyteller drawn to the watershed moments that bend the technology landscape. I braid narrative with data, humanise statistics, and trace the arc from first spark to world-changing impact. My reportage, features and reviews are witty, sardonic, visual and vivid, using anecdote to illuminate rather than eviscerate.