Essar Telecom and Virgin Mobile have entered into an alliance for Mobile Retailing. Essar group has already launched “The MobileStore” chain of mobile retail stores in India. British company, Virgin will provide consultancy on branding and marketing as a partner in the venture.
They will invest $250 million and setup 2,500 stores across 600 cities in India. Mobile India had written Essar’s retail plans in Sept-2006. Converge M, Mobile Magic, M Bazaar, MobileNXT are other branded retailers in this segment.
Essar-Virgin’s “The MobileStore” in addition to Handsets from Sony-Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, LG will also offer MP3 players, Gaming Devices and Digital Cameras.