NEW DELHI, India — The timing for Walmart’s first buyer-seller summit in India earlier this month couldn’t have been better.

As Indian firms keen to tap the retailing giant’s global network prepared their pitches, the Indian government gave the first concrete sign that it may be ready to open up its potentially huge retail market to foreign investors — an opportunity that America’s largest retailer has been chasing for as many as 20 years.

It’s not just big for Walmart, the company argues. “For India, the opening of retail would be a game changer,” said Rajan Mittal, vice chairman of the firm’s joint venture partner here.

Barred from opening retail stores in India, Walmart had been sourcing millions of dollars worth of textiles and other products here since 2001. Then, finally, after years of waiting for the world’s next largest market to open its doors, the Arkansas-based company went around back — forming a joint venture with billionaire Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises, best known as the operator of India’s largest telecommunications network, Airtel. That gave Walmart the right to open wholesale stores in India and lay some groundwork through the Indian-owned Bharti Retail chain. But it wasn’t exactly a sweetheart deal.

After opening its first retail store in China in 1996, Walmart swiftly ramped up to nearly 300 retail outlets, as well as 180 larger “supercenters.” But in India, the company’s Bharti-Walmart joint venture has due to restrictions managed only to open three so-called cash-and-carry stores — which sell in bulk to other retailers.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101006/walmart-economy