POCO, the spin-off brand of Xiaomi has appointed Himanshu Tandon as the new head of India operations. He succeeds Anuj Sharma, who is returning to Xiaomi India as chief marketing officer. As part of a restructuring, the company is also appointing Alvin Tse, former head of Xiaomi Indonesia and founding team member of Xiaomi, as the company’s head of operations in India.
Tandon has been a part of POCO’s founding team and played a key role in the brand’s growth in India. Earlier he was the head of online sales and retail at POCO India. Before joining POCO, he was a senior manager- regional business manager and corporate strategy at Videocon Mobiles.
POCO started as a sub-brand of Xiaomi, catering to younger buyers and selling its devices online. It was spun off to become an independent company in January 2020. The company had managed to capture 2% of the smartphone market share in the first month of operations in 2020, according to a Counterpoint Research report published in April 2022. As per the same report, POCO was also one of the top five brands in the ₹15,000-20,000 price segment as of Q1 22.
Tandon has a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, with specialisations in strategy, sales and marketing, and general management.
POCO India claims that Tandon holds a Guinness Book of World Record for opening a record number of stores in a single day. He opened 505 stores for Xiaomi on a single day when he was project manager at the company.
“In the subsequent days, Himanshu is looking forward to connecting with all of you and taking POCO to even greater heights,” POCO India said in a statement.