'Are You OK?': Lei Jun's Indian 'Purgatory' and 'Ascension'

Prologue: A "Social Death" Scene in New Delhi

On April 23, 2015, in New Delhi, India, the Siri Fort Auditorium was packed to the rafters, sweltering in the heat. This was Xiaomi's first large-scale launch event outside of China. The star of the show was a phone specially designed for the Indian market—the Mi 4i.

Halfway through the event, Xiaomi's Global Vice President, the Brazilian Hugo Barra, fired up the crowd with his fluent English. Then, in a very dramatic fashion, he invited his boss—Lei Jun—onstage to say a few words to the Indian "Mi Fans."

Lei Jun took a deep breath, straightened his orange T-shirt, and walked onto the stage. The spotlight hit his face. He tried to smile, but a hint of nervousness could be seen in his eyes. He had practiced his pronunciation from a script for a long time for this appearance.

"Hello! How are you, Indian Mi fans?" he shouted out his prepared opening line, word by word, with all his might.

The Indian Mi fans in the audience were incredibly enthusiastic, responding to the founder from China with deafening applause and cheers. Encouraged by the atmosphere, Lei Jun decided to go off-script for some impromptu interaction. He pointed to the audience and, in his signature English with a heavy Xiantao accent, asked loudly:

"Are you OK?"

The crowd erupted again. Lei Jun was very pleased, thinking his pronunciation and interaction had been a great success. He even got a bit carried away, repeating "Are you OK?" several times to the audience and excitedly giving away a few Mi Bands as gifts. The whole process was a mix of awkwardness and sincerity, with a touch of comedy.

Lei Jun probably didn't expect that this few-minute video of his "social death" moment would go viral on the Chinese internet after being uploaded. After being remixed and re-edited by Bilibili uploaders, a divine song titled "Are you OK?" was born, sweeping through everyone's playlists with lightning speed and quickly surpassing ten million views. Lei Jun, the serious tech entrepreneur, had inexplicably become a top "singer" in Bilibili's meme zone overnight.

This infectious "Are you OK?" has since become an indelible and bittersweet tag for Lei Jun. But behind this widely parodied joke lies a true story of blood and tears from Xiaomi's expansion in the Indian market, a journey from falling into hell to fighting back from the brink.

Act I: From Heaven to Hell, Separated by a Court Summons

Xiaomi's international journey began in India. With a population of over a billion and a very low smartphone penetration rate, the country was like a virgin land waiting to be cultivated, full of temptation.

In July 2014, Xiaomi partnered with India's largest e-commerce platform, Flipkart, and brought its successful "online flash sale" model from China to India to sell the Mi 3 phone.

The result was a huge success, a miracle even. In the first sale, 20,000 phones were sold out in 3 seconds. Flipkart's website crashed due to the unexpectedly massive traffic. The Indian media exclaimed, "The Apple of China has arrived!"

However, the joy of victory was short-lived. It was like a tropical downpour, coming and going quickly.

Less than five months later, in December 2014, the Swedish telecom giant Ericsson, like a long-lurking hunter, suddenly launched a fatal attack. They sued Xiaomi in the Delhi High Court for patent infringement, demanding an immediate ban on the sale and import of all Xiaomi phone models in India.

The court quickly issued a temporary injunction. This meant that all of Xiaomi's business in India had to be put on "immediate hold." For a startup that had just opened up the market and was preparing to make big moves, it was a bolt from the blue. Overnight, Xiaomi India fell from a red-hot heaven into an abyss of no return.

"That was the most agonizing moment since I started my business," Lei Jun later recalled. "All our goods were stuck at customs, unable to be imported or sold. The money in the company's account was flowing out like tap water. I couldn't sleep at night, and my hair was falling out in clumps."

This was the first time for the young Xiaomi to learn the weight of the word "patent" on the international stage. The internet tactics that had been so successful in the domestic market encountered the harshest, most fundamental legal and regulatory challenges in the unfamiliar international jungle.

Act II: Building a Factory on the "Ruins"

In the face of the crisis, Lei Jun did not choose to back down. He quickly formed a "war cabinet" of legal, technical, and PR staff and personally led the team to Delhi immediately.

On one hand, Xiaomi's legal team engaged in extremely difficult negotiations and legal battles with Ericsson's powerful team of lawyers in the unfamiliar territory of India. On the other hand, in a hotel room in Delhi, under immense pressure, Lei Jun made an extremely bold and far-sighted decision: to build a factory in India.

He deeply realized that to truly establish a foothold in the Indian market and become a respected local company, they had to achieve complete "localization." Not just marketing and product localization, but full localization of production, supply chain, and human resources.

At the time, this decision was extremely risky. Building a factory in India meant facing the country's complex labor policies, underdeveloped infrastructure, and notoriously inefficient government approvals.

But Lei Jun was very determined. He personally visited Terry Gou of Foxconn, hoping the manufacturing giant would "take a risk" with Xiaomi in India. In the end, he reached a cooperation agreement with Foxconn to build Xiaomi's first overseas mobile phone factory on a piece of barren land in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

At the same time, to find a legal breakthrough, Xiaomi's engineering team worked closely with Qualcomm to sell only phones equipped with Qualcomm chips in the Indian market—because Qualcomm had already paid the corresponding patent licensing fees to Ericsson. This technical workaround temporarily circumvented the patent risk and bought precious time for the head-on legal battle.

During those darkest months, the Xiaomi India team was like a lone army deep behind enemy lines. Under huge pressure, they fought Ericsson tooth and nail in court, pushed forward the factory construction on barren land, and had to appease users, employees, and partners in India.

In the spring of 2015, after paying a hefty price of tens of millions of dollars, Xiaomi finally reached a temporary settlement with Ericsson, and the fatal sales ban was lifted.

It was only when the Mi 4i was re-launched at that post-apocalyptic press conference in India that Lei Jun finally had the chance to go on stage and say that emotional "Are you OK?". He was asking not only the Mi fans in the audience, but also himself and the bruised and battered Xiaomi India team that had just crawled out of purgatory.

Epilogue: Sincerity is the Best Passport

The unexpected popularity of "Are you OK?" caught Xiaomi's PR team off guard. They were initially very nervous, worried that it would damage Lei Jun's serious image as an entrepreneur.

But Lei Jun himself showed surprising calmness and open-mindedness. Not only did he not ask the team to "delete posts" or "reduce the heat," but he also actively used the meme to poke fun at himself on multiple public occasions and even interacted with Bilibili uploaders.

This rare sincerity and down-to-earth attitude, in turn, won him and Xiaomi the affection of countless young people. Everyone felt that this billionaire entrepreneur also had such a cute and real side.

And it was precisely with this sincere value of "making friends with users" and the extreme localization strategy of "building a factory on the ruins" that Xiaomi finally gained a firm foothold in the incredibly "involuted" Indian market. From building factories to investing in local Indian startups, to developing software features that suited the habits of Indian users, Xiaomi took one step at a time and eventually won the trust of Indian consumers.

In 2017, Xiaomi's market share in India historically surpassed the long-time hegemon Samsung to take the top spot.

Looking back at that slightly clumsy "Are you OK?" video now, it has long transcended a funny meme. It is a symbol, representing the awkwardness, embarrassment, and growing pains that all Chinese companies must experience when going global, and the tremendous effort and unwavering persistence behind these pains.

Key Takeaways

1. Globalization is not just about exporting products; it's about the full localization of business models, culture, and legal compliance: The patent lawsuit Xiaomi encountered in India is a mandatory course for all Chinese companies going abroad. It forced Xiaomi to learn and adapt to international rules from scratch, and to deeply localize by building factories in the local market.
2. The founder's IP is the best brand ambassador; sincerity is more touching than perfection: Lei Jun's "disastrous" English speech ultimately achieved an unexpectedly positive communication effect. This shows that in the social media era, when founders let go of their airs and show a real, down-to-earth side, they can greatly shorten the distance with users.
3. In the face of crisis, rapid response and proactive communication are the only way out: Faced with Ericsson's lawsuit and sales ban, Xiaomi did not choose silence or evasion. Instead, the founder led the team to the front line to solve the problem immediately and decisively made the strategic decision to build a local factory, ultimately resolving the crisis.