The Indian government has approved plans by Nokia to set up a retail joint venture in the country in collaboration with local company, HCL Infosystems. Nokia – the world’s largest handset vendor – will hold a 51 percent stake in the venture, taking advantage of recent changes to Indian law that allows foreign companies to hold a majority stake in so-called ‘single-brand’ retailers. HCL is currently Nokia’s sole distributor and marketing partner in large parts of the country, while Nokia uses individual franchisees elsewhere. According to an earlier report in India’s Economic Times, which cited Nokia’s application to India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the new retailer will be the first single-brand retail JV in the mobile handset space in India. The joint-venture plans to sell devices, software and entertainment content for mobile phones via HCL’s 100,000 retail outlets. Financial details were not disclosed.

According to the Economic Times report, the venture will sell products and services under three brands, ‘Nokia,’ the luxury ‘Vertu’ brand and the ‘Ovi’ mobile Internet services brand, though the strategy is deemed not to breach the rules around ‘single-brand’ retailing as they are all Nokia brands. The report adds that Nokia has over a 50 percent share of India’s handset market despite the presence of about 20 other handset-makers in the country. The joint venture is seen as a strategy to cross-sell its mobile services in conjunction with handsets. “Value-added services and applications is a big opportunity, and mostly untapped,” Gartner analyst Madhusudan Gupta told Dow Jones Newswires.