I think there's also a couple of other reasons for Jolla going about it in this fashion.

First of all, when the Intex device was launched (for that is what this is) there were Indian community members offering to re-ship them for non-Indian members. By doing this Jolla helps to take the burden off them. It should also be noted that enforcing the warranty with those devices from Intex, India might be very difficult for non-Indians - the Royal Mail in the UK state that the sending of mobile phones to India is prohibited [1] (it would be classed as an import, so you'd have to get special permission). You would also have to justify the postage costs (end-user > Indian community member > Intex and back), and even then I'm not even sure what the law regarding warranties is in India.

Secondly, as the vast majority of people who enter the program will already have a Jolla device, by having a decent-sized pool of experienced (with the OS) beta-testers, Jolla will be better able to iron out major bugs before they roll them out to the larger pool of retail devices in the Indian market.

I'd also hazard a guess that they'll sell as many complete batches of phones as they are able to without having to keep an inventory.


[1] http://www.royalmail.com/india