The tagline of Vodafone at present is “Together we can”. Where, a tagline is an expression that is remarkable and helpful in an industrial, constitutional, spiritual as well as some other subject, like an iterative aspect of a thought or an objective along with an aim of persuading people of the public or direct groups that are more precise. So, if we talk about the slogan of Vodafone then it was “Power to you” which was introduced by Vodafone in 2009, later in 2017 this tagline was replaced with “The Future Is Exciting. Ready?”. Later onwards when Jio jumped into the market then Vodafone India had to merge with Idea Cellular as the market of both companies was declining very fast.
After the merger, the new brand ‘Vi’ was accompanied by the tagline “Together for Tomorrow”. And in 2018, on the 31st of August both the companies merged to form a new organization named Vodafone Idea Limited. However, in 2021 Vodafone Fiji launched a new tagline “Together we can” in order to emphasize what technology can do when combined with the human spirit in a multi-market brand repositioning.
Overview:
Vodafone is a British International telecommunication company that is one of the world’s largest telecom operators. This UK-based telecom operator has its headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire, England, and provides mobile and broadband services. Actually, if we talk about the name of Vodafone then it has come from voice data fone, where the last word(fone) is an interesting spelling of ‘phone’. If compared with the number of customers then with four hundred million connections and customers across twenty-six countries, it is one of the largest telcos all over the world. This company operates and owns networks in twenty-two countries and with partner networks, it operates in forty-eight further countries. Also, its Vodafone Global Enterprise division supplies telecommunication and IT services to corporate clients in 150 countries.
Vodafone India, previously known as Vodafone Essar Ltd, Hutchison Essar Ltd was the Indian auxiliary of UK-based Vodafone Group plc and with its operational head office in Mumbai (then Bombay), a provider of telecommunications services in India. Till March 2018, Vodafone India had a market share of twenty-one percent but after its merger with Idea, the collective Vodafone Idea network is the third-largest mobile telecommunication network in India with approximately 375 million subscribers.
However, the entry of Jio in 2016 which had announced a free 4g internet facility along with voice calling, had affected many telecom companies. This led to various combinations and consolidations in the Indian telecom sector. In march 2017 it came to be known that Vodafone India and Idea cellular would be merged and in July 2018 this merger got its approval from the Department of Telecommunication. And, National Company Law Tribunal had given the final nod to the Vodafone Idea merger on 30th August 2018. The newly merged entity was then named Vodafone Idea Limited after the merger was completed on 31 August 2018. Here, the Aditya Birla Group holds 26% of the share whereas the Vodafone Group holds a 45.2% stake in the combined entity, and the remaining shares are held by the public under the terms of the deal.
Some Facts:
- It is interesting to know that in the UK the first two mobile calls were made by Vodafone and if we talk about the British first commercial call then it was actually made by Michael Harrison, who is the son of Vodafone’s first chairman, Sir Ernest Harrison. The first official call was made by Comedian Ernie Wise, proving to the public that the technology actually worked.
- The device with which that call was made with Mobira Transportable, which had a weight of 11 pounds, that’s roughly the same weight as 12 full cans of cola.
- Vodafone carried the first-ever text message. Richard Jarvis of Vodafone was the one who received the initiatory SMS, sent on Christmas Evening in 1992 from a 22-year-old test engineer named Neil Papworth. The message read: “Happy Christmas”.
- In the year 1993, Vodafone hit ten lakhs customers.