Xiaomi brings Mi Credit to India, will offer up to 1 Lakh Rupees loan to MIUI users

Xiaomi brings Mi Credit to India, will offer up to 1 Lakh Rupees loan to MIUI users

After announcing its foray into the Indian internet streaming market through Mi Music and Mi Video, Xiaomi is bringing its third value-added service, aka Mi Credit, to India. The Mi Credit, as the name suggests, is a money lending platform serving as a bridge between financial loan providers and MIUI users -- people having a phone running MIUI software which means phones like the Mi A1 that run stock Android will not be supported. "Financial loan providers are listed on Mi Credit, and Xiaomi users can log onto the platform to apply for quick loans," Xiaomi said in a press statement on Thursday.

The Mi Credit service is exclusive to MIUI users for now, and also there's just one loan provider, named KreditBee, to boot. KreditBee, according to Xiaomi, is "an instant personal loan platform for young professionals." MIUI users can avail loans from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1 lakh from KreditBee through Mi Credit. Xiaomi notes that the process of availing a loan, through the platform, will be quick and convenient.

"The loan can be initiated in less than 10 minutes with a simple KYC verification. All verification and user information input is done on partner platforms, with Mi Credit currently only listing all agents," it adds.

For 15-day loan products from Rs 1,000 to Rs 9,900, KreditBee says, it charge a flat interest at 1.48 per cent (annualised interest rate: 36 per cent per annum). For 30-90 day loan products from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1,00,000, it says it charges an annualised interest rate of 36 per cent per annum.

Not many people in India know that Xiaomi is first and foremost an internet services and software company. And a hardware company later. The company, in fact says, it makes hardware just so this hardware can serve as a messenger for its content, in China. Xiaomi, only recently, announced its foray into the Indian internet streaming market, in partnership with Hungama (and others). As part of the partnership, Mi users -- people who have Mi phones -- can now listen to over 10 million freemium songs from Hungama Music directly from the Mi Music app. The company is giving videos a similar treatment, bringing almost 500,000 hours of content to Mi devices through Xiaomi's Mi Video app.

"Xiaomi provides internet services to give our users a complete mobile internet experience, and MIUI functions as an open platform for us to deliver our wide range of internet services, such as content, entertainment, financial services and productivity tools. The connectivity between our devices and the seamless integration between hardware and internet services enable us to provide our users with better user experience. Mi Credit is another big step in bringing an important internet service to India and we trust that our users would be able to truly benefit as the service becomes more sophisticated," Manu Jain who is vice president for Xiaomi and managing director for Xiaomi India said.

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The Mi Credit is now the third value-added internet service from Xiaomi for India. It's widely known that Xiaomi makes money off of its internet services in China what with its hardware devices costing peanuts. The company sells most of its hardware devices at cost which is where its internet streaming services come into the picture: it is through these services that Xiaomi actually makes money.

Xiaomi, it seems, is now in a position to do just that in India as well. People in India know about the company, they know about its products and their supposed 'honest' pricing.