Exclusive: Xiaomi India Set to Lose Another Top Leader as CMO Anuj Sharma Prepares to Exit

Xiaomi put the Redmi Turbo 5 on an Indian stage today, its loudest pitch yet for the performance buyer, a phone built around speed and a big battery and sold through Amazon. Walk through who carried that launch and one name is conspicuously absent.

The event was opened by Abi Go, Deputy Director of Global Marketing at Xiaomi, and then handed to Ritij Khurana, Associate Director of Marketing at Xiaomi India, and Sandeep Sarma, Associate Director for Marketing and PR. Notice who was not on that list. Anuj Sharma, the company's Chief Marketing Officer and one of the most visible figures in Xiaomi India's leadership over the past few years, did not front a launch that would normally sit squarely in his lane, his customary slot instead filled by a global deputy. On its own that proves nothing, because senior people sit out events all the time. But set against what several people inside and around the company have been telling us, the lineup reads less like a scheduling quirk and more like a quiet tell.

According to multiple people familiar with the matter, Sharma is on his way out of Xiaomi India. His last working day could not be independently confirmed at the time of writing, and the company has not made any announcement, but June is said to be his last month. If it holds, the move would make him the latest senior name to walk out of a leadership group that has been thinning steadily for the better part of three years. It also lines up neatly with a report from Smartprix, which said Xiaomi India was bracing for another round of executive exits and planned to redistribute responsibilities among the leaders who remain rather than rush to hire replacements.

For anyone who follows this market, Sharma needs little introduction. He first joined Xiaomi India in September 2018 as the brand was tightening its grip on the top of the smartphone charts, left in 2020 to run POCO India as Country Director through its early independent years, and returned to Xiaomi in 2022 as Chief Marketing Officer to take charge of brand and marketing strategy. Behind that sits close to two decades of selling phones to Indians. Before Xiaomi he had a short stint heading Asia Pacific mobiles at Razer in Singapore, ran product management at Motorola Mobility under Lenovo, and before that spent years across marketing and product roles in Lenovo's smartphone business in Bengaluru, from product marketing to the India online business. He has been, in other words, one of the steadier hands in a category that rarely keeps the same people for long.

That steadiness is exactly what makes the timing notable. Sharma's expected departure would not be an isolated event but the continuation of a pattern. The leadership team that once powered Xiaomi to the number one position in India has been coming apart in stages. Chief Business Officer Raghu Reddy left at the end of 2022. Manu Kumar Jain, the executive most closely associated with building and scaling the India business, moved to a global role before exiting the company in early 2023. President Muralikrishnan B resigned in late 2024. And only weeks ago the very top of the structure changed hands again, with India head Alvin Tse moving back to Xiaomi's global headquarters and Alexander Tang stepping in to steer the brand, part of a restructuring the company framed around tightening its online business in a tougher market.

Why this matters comes down to the ground Xiaomi has lost. The brand that once ran away with the Indian market on the strength of affordable, high volume phones has watched its lead erode against Vivo, Samsung, Apple and a clutch of rivals it used to outpace easily. Livemint recently put a number on the decline, describing it as a roughly Rs 15,000 crore wipeout as Xiaomi slipped down the standings. Analyses elsewhere, including a detailed reckoning by Digit, have pointed to muddled product positioning and unhappy retailers as much as to competition. Xiaomi's own answer has been a pivot, away from chasing pure volume and toward a value and premium story, where average selling prices climb even as shipments soften. It is a sensible strategy on paper. It is also a hard one to execute, and it leans heavily on marketing to convince buyers that a brand they once knew as the budget default is now worth paying more for.

That is the part of the picture where Sharma's exit, if confirmed, would sting most. A Chief Marketing Officer is the person who carries the brand's voice through exactly this kind of transition, and losing that voice in the middle of a repositioning is not a small thing. It leaves Xiaomi attempting one of the trickiest moves in consumer tech, persuading a price sensitive market to trade up, while reshuffling the very team meant to tell that story. Whether the company can hold its narrative together through another leadership change, or whether the churn itself becomes the story rivals are happy to let run, is the question that now hangs over its India business.

We have reached out to Xiaomi India to request for comment at the time of publishing. This story will be updated if and when the company shares an official statement.