The merger of Vodafone India with telecom peer Idea Cellular is inching towards a closure, with the companies awaiting a couple of regulatory approvals.
The companies are awaiting approvals from National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
“Most of the approvals for the merger are already in place. We are now awaiting approvals from NCLT and DoT,” said Sunil Sood, Vodafone India MD and CEO, while declining to comment on the timeline of the final merger.
He spoke on the sidelines of the company’s announcement of a new brand positioning.
Earlier this year, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular had agreed to merge their operations to create the country’s largest telecom operator worth more than $23 billion with a 35 per cent market share. The combined entity of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, which are currently India’s number 2 and 3, respectively, would dislodge Bharti Airtel to counter the fierce price war in the world’s second-largest telecom market with total number of customers at 400 million. The deal gives Vodafone India an implied enterprise value of ₹82,800 crore and Idea ₹ 72,200 crore.
On Tuesday, Vodafone India announced their new brand positioning as part of their global shift towards a new identity with the company changing it’s tagline from ‘Power To You’ to ‘Future is Exciting. Ready?’.
The company in its statement has also mentioned that Vodafone would be placing greater emphasis on it’s iconic ‘speech mark’ logo, the biggest change to the hallmark logo since it was introduced in 1998.

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