Hutch to become Vodafone on Friday

India’s second largest mobile company Hutch will be called Vodafone from Friday. The UK based company Vodafone had recently acquired a majority stake in Hutch from Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunication International Ltd and the company was formally renamed Vodafone Essar in July 2007.
"We’ve had a great innings as Hutch in India and today marks a new beginning for us. Not as a departure from the fundamentals that created Hutch, but an acceleration into the future with Vodafone’s global expertise," said managing director, Vodafone-Essar Asim Ghosh, The popular brand, Hutch, will be transitioned to Vodafone across India. The brand change over the next few weeks will be unveiled nationally through a high profile media campaign.
"This transition is probably the largest brand change ever undertaken in this country and arguably as big as any in the world. It is even larger than our own previous brand transitions as it touches over 35 million customers, across 4,00,000 shops and thousands of our own and our business associates’ empl-oyees," said Mr Harit Nagpal, marketing and new business director, Vodafone Essar.
Vodafone has operations in 25 countries across five continents and 40 partner networks with over 200 million customers worldwide. Vodafone has partnered with the Essar group as its principal joint venture partner for the Indian market. The Essar group is one of India ’s largest corporate houses.