Vodafone India

Vodafone India is based in Mumbai, and was formerly known as Vodafone Essar und Hutchison Essar. In 1994 it commenced operations and now (2012) has operations across the country with over 150 million customers. In 2012 the company “has been awarded the Most Admired Telecom Operator and Best 3G Operator at the recent Telecom Operator Awards 2012. They have also received the globally recognized prestigious ‘Product of the Year 2012’ consumer award for Vodafone Apps Store in the Mobile Services Category. In another survey conducted by Nielsen, Vodafone India was the only telecom player in the Top 10 ‘Most Exciting Youth Brands’ in India. Vodafone India also features in the Top 10 ‘Most Trusted Brands in India’ for 2011, in a survey conducted by a leading financial daily.”The Essar Group has already been a successful and market leading company when they joined the Vodafone Group. When Hutch took the major stake of the Essar Group, the business grew to be “the largest wireless markets in India – in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. In these densely populated urban areas it was able to establish a robust network, well-known brand and large distribution network – all vital to long-term success in India. Then it also targeted business users and high-end post-paid customers, which helped Hutchison Essar to consistently generate a higher average revenue per user (ARPU) than its competitors. By adopting this focused growth plan, it was able to establish leading positions in India's largest markets providing the resources to expand its footprint nationwide.“ When Hutchinson Telekom joined Vodafone in 2007 it has already been a profitable and prosperous brand in India. Hutch has launched many successful commercials such as the ad campaign launched in 2003 involving a pug named “Cheeka”. This pug was following a little boy around in many places, combined with a slogan “Wherever you go, your network follows”. It became a great success and was continued to be shown by Vodafone after its rebranding.

Shortly after their joining of Vodafone they tried to focus on the rural mass market, starting in Uttar Pradesh, which is the most populous and fifth largest state in India. They soon discovered, opposite to their doubts, that the rural market with its high population and mostly low-income subscribers represent a very lucrative and interesting customer market. Vodafone started to invest in new technologies as well as new network signals, and started their own model of distribution. ““Wherever signal goes, distribution must follow” displays their single line philosophy and became their marketing strategy. However their vertically divided marketing strategy has two main areas. One which does revenue mining in urban areas and the other one which helps do the rural marketing whose only jobs are: to make sure they develop the products which are consumer based; and to talk to the customers in their language. “By aligning their products to the rural market they discovered that the lower the income strata, the higher is the need for communication. Especially for these people, living in isolated communities, cut off from communication. Therefore Vodafone started to introduce two innovations. One, what is called a micro recharge, making the product lucrative by lowering the recharge down to Rs.10, adjusting the price to the low-income cycle. Second, they simplified tariffs including special tariff vouchers, enabling the customers to get a very simple and low tariff.
Restructuring and innovating the tariff system in addition to focusing on rural and urban customers strengthened the Vodafone brand and increased the number of current and possible customers. Nonetheless these marketing strategies concerning price and availability, Vodafone invested as well in commercials. As mentioned before, Hutch used to be very successful with their pug commercials. They attracted the attention of their Indian customers and won many admirers throughout the country. Subsequently Vodafone introduced a campaign called the ZooZoos, which gained even higher popularity than the pug-commercials did.