or more than a decade now, the Nokia Group has believed in Connecting People. But as one watches a khaki-clad postman in Rajasthan stop in front of a certain green door to deliver not a letter but an SMS in Hindi on a Nokia phone, one begins to appreciate how firmly the transnational has stuck by its motto. Though elsewhere it might have lost some ground (its worldwide sales decreased 1 per cent to EURO 29.3 billion in 2004), the Finnish mobile giant, known globally for its upmarket mobile phones and wireless network gear, has made itself quite at home in India. This, by dint of its steady, but aggressive, localisation drive.


The first cut of mobility occurred in India about six years back. Yet the penetration of mobile phones in the country is only about 5 per cent (the global average is upwards of 25 per cent). While there is a small number of users looking for newer applications on their mobile phones, there is a bigger section whose need is simply a mobile voice. It is here that the thrust of Nokia�s (December 2004 turnover: Rs 7,500 crore) localisation strategy lies.
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