Around three years ago, Nokia stirred to life again: In the middle of 2016, HMD Global, a Finnish startup set up with former Nokia employees, acquired the rights to use the Nokia brand name. By early 2017, the smartphones were back in the market. Resurrection is in Nokia’s DNA, says Ajey Mehta, vice president and region head, APAC and India, HMD Global. “If you go back into Nokia’s history, it has reinvented itself and come back even stronger,” he adds. He says he learnt a Finnish word sisu in the 14 years he has spent with the brand: Sisu basically means not giving up. Over its history, Nokia has not given up but reinvented itself periodically: The company behind Nokia was founded in 1865 in Finland as a paper company; since then, it has continuously shifted gears from paper to rubber to robotics to chemicals, and finally electronics and telecommunications in the 1970s.

In its second avatar, Nokia phones—built by Foxconn, powered by Google software, and designed and marketed by HMD Global—were relaunched in 100 countries. HMD Global is focussing on three countries—China, the U.S., and India—but its biggest bet is on India. According to Pekka Rantala, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of HMD Global, India is its biggest and most exciting market. It makes sense to focus on India, considering it’s the biggest smartphone market with nearly 350 million users and counting. According to an Assocham-PwC study, the number of smartphone users in India is expected to reach 859 million by 2022 at a compound annual growth rate of 12.9%. The U.S. and China markets, on the other hand, are slowing down. “Our choice is to focus on India followed by the U.S. when it comes to these big three markets,” says Rantala.

According to Singh, India is an important market for any player for three reasons. First, there aren’t many 100 million-plus markets that are growing at close to double digits. Second, there is huge room for growth as around 500 million Indians still use feature phones and are likely to move to smartphones soon. Third, the government is giving incentives to make in India and firms can also think of the country as an alternative export hub to China.

Already, Nokia is among the top 10 smartphone companies in India. But it’s still at the bottom end with a market share of just 2.4% in the second quarter of 2019, way behind Xiaomi’s 28% or Samsung at 25%, according to analytics firm Counterpoint Research. Still, Counterpoint calls Nokia one of the brands with the highest year-on-year growth. Last year was particularly good, with the company hitting a high of 3.5% market share in the December 2018 quarter, in the 147-million smartphone market. This was followed by a dismal 1.7% share in the first quarter of 2019, which Counterpoint Research associate director Tarun Pathak attributes to a shift in HMD Global’s product strategy.

Rantala, who will be moving out at the end of September after being with the brand for close to 20 years, is unfazed by the competition or market share battle. He says the company is laser-focussed on what consumers want. For example, it found the two pain points many smartphone customers had were a sluggish user interface because of a customised version of Android and the battery running out. He says HMD has focussed on getting these aspects right (more on that later). “It is a very competitive market, but I believe we can offer something which is unique for the consumers,” he says.

How is Rantala so confident about Nokia in India? For one, the company is hoping to cash in on the sense of nostalgia that Nokia evokes among some customers whose first phone was a Nokia. But that won’t be enough. “We wanted to make sure that everyone understands that we didn’t come here just to live in the past but live this moment and the future,” Rantala says. Mehta reveals that three-quarters of their customers are young millennials, a very unforgiving band when it comes to matters of taste, who have never experienced the brand. No wonder that millennials and the younger generation—generation Z—are at the centre of Nokia’s marketing strategy. The aura around the brand hasn’t disappeared due to its absence. “Every new brand has to spend millions of dollars on brand building exercises for the first two-three years,” says IDC’s Singh. “Nokia did not need to do that.”