Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), which recently had to delay its first India store opening due to local violence, has announced it will be opening 15 wholesale locations in India with partner Bharti within the next three years. Along with each location will come a $7 million investment from the world's largest retailer.

When Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) joined up with India's Bharti a few years back to bring the world's largest retailer to India, it probably thought things through very well. Of course, entering huge markets like India and China was a no-brainer for Wal-Mart, after failing in markets like South Korea and Germany. Little did Wal-Mart know that violence would someday delay its grand opening in India.

Not only has Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT)'s Japanese-based Seiyu Ltd. unit had a loss for the first half of 2007, but now the subsidiary looks to take a loss for the entire year, according to company. Seiyu said this week that it is planning on taking a full-year loss for calendar 2007, which would give it six straight years in a row without a penny of profit.

Questions immediately come to mind: Will Wal-Mart get out of Japan and sell Seiyu completely to cut its losses? After all, it exited Germany and South Korea in 2006 after many bad financial performances in those countries. It cut its losses there and escaped from the doldrums of loss -- why not in Japan? Hard to tell at this point, but the world's largest retailer did not respond to speculation that it would exit the Japanese market.

But what do you think if you're a Wal-Mart shareholder? The company has poured more than $1 billion into Seiyu (which has 393 stores in Japan), with not much to show for it except occasional upticks in sales that make for little else besides decent headlines.

Wal-Mart has found good look recently in China with the Trust-Mart partnership and in India with partner Bharti, but it's just not cutting the mustard in Japan. Will Wal-Mart continuing propping its Japanese unit up with more money, hoping for some kind of profit on the horizon? Your guess is as good as mine. Six years is a long, long time in the retail biz.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) may be looking to expand its expertise beyond the merchandising of everyday, low-priced goods as it enters the Indian market full-force with partner Bharti. As such, the world's largest retailer is soliciting possible business from other large retailers in that country in order to lend a hand to the complicated front-end operational logistics that has allowed Wal-Mart to become the inventory-handling behemoth it is.

Basically, Wal-Mart wants to handle the technical operations and expertise needed to firmly establish and grow a retail operation in India that can scale as needed with the expected continuing blockbuster growth many industrialized centers are seeing in India. Why Wal-Mart would want to assist the competition in this way is puzzling, although I am sure the company is charging a decent amount for its services.

Still, the first reported technical support collaboration will be given to Bharti Retail, Wal-Mart's exclusive sales partner for the Indian market. Wal-Mart, which has seen its own withdrawal from countries like South Korea and Germany in the last year, wants to go for the jugular with entry into India and China, two retail markets on a tear as the middle class develops more steadily in those two billion-plus populated countries.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) continues to get slammed from the media and retail critics as not changing and reacting fast enough to stay ahead of the retail discount crowd these days. Sure, the company is making record amounts of revenues (profit margin is another matter), but the company's monthly same-store sales stats and quarterly results aren't comparing to established expectations, nor are they outshining results from competitor Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT).

It's hard to measure Wal-Mart against any other retailer just based on its sheer size, merchandising prowess, and customer availability (supercenters seem to be everywhere these days), but the company has clearly made some strategic errors of late that have impacted results. While I'm not sure which traffic drivers Wal-Mart plans on to get feet in the door (then selling as much as possible to that captive audience), its recent admission of apparel planning mistakes seems to underscore the challenges the world's largest retailer has in trying to get its shine back.

While sales in the U.S. continue to get a collective "yawn" from market pundits and journalists, the company's about-face move in international retail seems to be moving rather fast as the company wants to reap more sales and margin from those markets than from the U.S. market (which takes time investors are not willing to give, it seems). Wal-Mart's recent partnerships with China's Trust-Mart and India's Bharti state to the world that Wal-Mart is serious about its international plans, even in the face of market withdrawals in Germany and South Korea in 2006. The rumor that Wal-Mart may be looking to acquire or take a stake in Indian logistics and retail distribution company Radhakrishna Foodland says that Wal-Mart is placing a pretty good deal of importance into rapidly-expanding markets (India is at the top of that list with China).

With the failure of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.(NYSE:WMT)in countries like South Korea and Germany, has the world's largest retailer figured out how to compete in countries where the big-box strategy does not work as well? How about customized merchandise offerings, presentation differences, small formats and a more personalized shopping experience -- and that's just for starters.

Wal-Mart's proposed move to partner with Bharti and move into the Indian market in order to capitalize on that country's rapid thirst for retail buying has caused these questions to surface once again.

Wal-Mart may keep the neighborhood store format when it moves into Indian cities with the Indian consumer's preference in mind. Good move -- and that's always a good move for any country. The "one size fits all" approach does not work with all the disparate cultures globally -- and Wal-Mart is waking up to this fact regardless of what its previous research has shown. Don't cater to the local market? Well, watch yourself flop like a fish on a trawler deck.

Is Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.'s (NYSE:WMT) entry into a new international market -- India -- going to be an easy ride at all? Well, the world's biggest retailer's plans to enter India in partnership with India's Bharti that was announced last November in an attempt to have a memorandum of understanding to explore business opportunities in retail within that rather populous country.

Wal-Mart's partnership with Bharti would give the global retailer a direct entry into India's huge base of retail dollar spending -- in the area of $300 billion U.S. dollars.

But is Wal-Mart's possibly foray into India coming under political attack? Why wouldn't it? It's quite a move for the world's biggest retailer to join with an established Indian presence to "explore business opportunities". But, Bharti is clearing the air -- somewhat -- by saying "Bharti will manage the front-end 100%, while Wal-Mart will provide support at the back-end, logistics and supply chain."