Hugo Barra

Hugo Barra
Barra at LeWeb 2013 talking about Xiaomi
Born	Hugo Barra (1976-10-30) October 30, 1976 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Residence	Beijing, China
Nationality	Brazilian
Other names	Chinese: 虎哥 ("Tiger Brother")[1]
Education	Colégio Pitágoras
Alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (B.E.E.)
Occupation	Vice President of International, Xiaomi
Years active	1999–present
Known for	Vice President, Xiaomi Vice President and product spokesperson, Google Android division

Hugo Barra (born October 28, 1976 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil)^[2] is a Brazilian computer scientist, technology executive and entrepreneur. He is currently Vice President of International for Xiaomi in Beijing.^[3] From 2008 to 2013, he served in a number of product management roles at Google in London and California, including Vice President and product spokesman of Google's Android division.^[4]

Early life and education

Barra attended primary and secondary schools at local Colégio Pitágoras in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and in 1995 enrolled at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), majoring in Electrical Engineering.^[2] In 1996, Barra transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating with a bachelor's degree in management science and masters in electrical engineering and computer science. He was class president of the class of 2000 and student keynote speaker at MIT commencement 2000.^[5]

Career

LOBBY7 and Nuance Communications

In 2000, Barra co-founded LOBBY7 with MIT classmates.^[6] (The company’s name was inspired by the lobby of building 7, the main entrance to the Infinite Corridor at MIT).

LOBBY7 provided mobile speech recognition software. The company was acquired by ScanSoft in 2003, which became Nuance Communications in 2005 via merger.^[7] Barra held various positions at Nuance in Product Management, Product Marketing, and Business Development, launching a number of mobile speech recognition products.^[7]

Google

Barra joined American technology company Google in London in March 2008 as Group Product Manager for the Google Mobile team.^[8] In 2010 Barra joined the Android team.^[9]

From 2010 to 2013, Barra’s role expanded to include product spokesperson for the Android team, speaking at both press conferences and Google I/O, Google’s annual developer-focused conference. Barra’s product involvement included the entire Android ecosystem of software and hardware, including Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and KitKat operating system launches, the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 smartphones, the Nexus 7^[10] and Nexus 10 tablets,^[11] and other related products such as Google Now,^[12] selected in 2013 as Popular Science’s Innovation of the Year,^[13] and Google Voice Search, Google’s speech recognition service. He was promoted to Vice President in 2012.

Xiaomi

In September 2013, Barra left Google for Chinese electronics company Xiaomi, serving as Vice President of International.^[14] The move was considered a ‘significant hire’ for Xiaomi, one of the fastest growing manufacturers in China, enhancing international legitimacy to the company by adding a key former Google Android executive to its senior management.^[15]

In December 2013, Barra spoke at LeWeb tech conference in Paris, France about his impressions of the Chinese economy and the opportunity it represented for tech companies such as Xiaomi, citing China's 600 million internet users, high market caps of recent Chinese IPOs, the massive scale of the top Chinese apps' monthly active users, and the size of companies such as Alibaba's Taobao, a shopping site more than double the size of eBay and Amazon combined.^[16] The talk was widely cited throughout the industry.^[4]

In February 2014, Barra announced the launch of the new Redmi and Mi3 smartphones in Singapore.^[17] Global expansion outside of China into surrounding emerging markets is a key initiative for Xiaomi, given the company’s business model to release high performance smartphone products at an affordable consumer price, generating revenue not only from the hardware itself, but the software and internet services provided to the consumer.^[18] According to Xiaomi co-founder and president Lei Jun, it is “entirely Barra’s job to figure out which region that we should enter next and how.”^[19] Barra has stated intentions to expand next into various countries.^[20]

In March 2014, Barra visited Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturing company with plants in Brazil and Mexico responsible for assembling products for various tech brands, indicating plans for Xiaomi to expand into Latin America.^[21]

In May 2014, Barra announced the launch of the MiPad, a 7.9 inch tablet. “We spent four years working up to the point where we thought we had the right hardware design and software capability to build a world-class tablet,” Barra said. “We think we are there, finally.” Barra described the release as part of Xiaomi's overall strategy to expand both its product lineup and into new international markets including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Barra also indicated eventual plans to enter the U.S. market.^[22]

Honors and awards

In 2011, Barra was ranked #23 in Wired Magazine’s Wired 100.^[23] In 2013, Business Insider’s Silicon Valley 100 included Barra at #92.^[24] Brazil's Época magazine ranked Barra among the most influential Brazilians in both 2011^[25] and 2013.^[26]

References

External links

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