About four years ago, Lei Jun (CEO) and Bin Lin (Founder and President) of Xiaomi decided to turn a young rockstar startup into a global player, they called upon ex-Googler, Hugo Barra to assist in this mission.
Now the ebullient global Vice President is bidding farewell to the Chinese consumer electronics and hardware company.
Related story: Xiaomi is set to make its U.S. launch
Hugo Barra made this announcement via his Facebook page and Twitter page some hours ago
My 3.5 years at @xiaomi has been the greatest life adventure. Now it’s time to come home. Wrote a letter here: https://t.co/mLrF1kFUeM
— Hugo Barra (@hbarra) January 23, 2017
He cited health problems as the reason for leaving as he claimed that living in Beijing has taken a huge toll on his life. He adds that
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 I thought about this late last year, I concluded that Xiaomi is in a very good place on its global expansion path, and if there was ever going to be a good time for me to come back home, that time is now — when I can confidently say our global business is no longer just an in-house startup. We turned India from a dream into Xiaomi’s largest international market with $1 billion in annual revenues, faster than any company in India’s history. We expanded into Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and more recently 20 other markets including Russia, Mexico, and Poland.
We teamed up with Google to launch our first official product in the US, and with our successful debut at CES 2017 — where we won 3 prestigious awards — the world now sees that Xiaomi is a global player changing the tech industry through our simple promise of bringing innovation to everyone.
Bin Lin wishes him the best and announced that Xiang Wang, Xiaomi Senior Vice President, will lead the company’s entire global efforts moving forward.
