From what is seems , Xiaomi is loosing one of the most valuable asset that the company had, the head of international and primary English-language spokesperson Hugo Barra. At least this is what Hugo announced before some minutes from his Facebook account.
Hugo Barra joined Xiaomi before 3.5 years, when it was thought as a big success for the company. Now, he is leaving from the ship, leaving it without a captain. The truth is that this year Xiaomi had a lot of problems. For the first time the company declined to provide annual sales figures and admitted it grew too quick, raising doubts about whether it can continue the impressive growth that gave it a $45 billion valuation two years ago. Hugo Barra as a cause of this leaving told that is his home sickness, that for these 3.5 years he lives 6500 km away from his family and that he plans to move back to California. In his announcement was telling the follow:
What I’ve realized is that the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health. My friends, what I consider to be my home, and my life are back in Silicon Valley, which is also much closer to my family. Seeing how much I’ve left behind these past few years, it is clear to me that the time has come to return.
As he said, he leaves the company “in a very good place.” Don’t forget that before Hugo Barra comes to Xiaomi, the company was great only inside China. Hugo has managed to “invade” and expand Xiaomi to 20 other countries like India, Brazil, USA, Greece and many more. Of course there where and challenges. Xiaomi lost the first place from rivals like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo that are coming to the top aggressively.
India for sure is the biggest success of Hugo. He had spent a lot of time for this country and Xiaomi said that it reached $1 billion in annual revenue in India for the first time in 2016. Now the big challenge for the Xiaomi is who is gonna put in the place of Hugo. Don’t forget that Hugo came from Google, where he was executive there for many years.
Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin, also a former Google executive, said senior vice president Xiang Wang would lead Xiaomi’s international business going forward. Wang, a former head of Qualcomm China, joined Xiaomi in 2015 and previously led its supply chain and intellectual property teams. Bin also payed tribute to Barra’s tenure with the company.
When Hugo joined us 3.5 years ago, we started an amazing adventure to turn Xiaomi into a global player. We have come a long way since, and I couldn’t thank him enough for contributing so much to Xiaomi’s journey. As much as we would love to have Hugo stay with us in Beijing for a much longer time, we understand his personal challenges and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
Barra said that he intents to leave from Xiaomi right after the Chinese New Year. He will take some time off to rest before “embarking on a new adventure back in Silicon Valley.” I don’t know if these news are good or bad, but for sure will mess up things a lot. All we have to do is to wait and see how Xiaomi is gonna react to these news. What do you think, could this means bad news for Xiaomi or could be the start of a new era!? Write us down your thoughts.