India’s mobile operator Bharti Airtel, which recently acquired 70 per cent of the stakes of Warid Telecom in Bangladesh, is set to change the brand name of Warid to ‘airtel’ in December, Indian media reported.
Bharti officials in New Delhi on Thursday unveiled a new logo of the company, an artistically written small ‘A’ above ‘Airtel’ with the letters in lower case – all in red against a white background, reported Times of India.
Subsequently the company also changed the brand name of Zain Telecom in Africa to airtel. Airtel acquired Zain operations in 15 African countries earlier this year at $10.7 billion, according to the ToI report.
Warid Telecom in Bangladesh would be changed to ‘airtel’ before the end of December and the company’s Sri Lanka operations will also witness new image in next two weeks, it added.
Terming the re-branding as a strategic shift in positioning since the company was catering to customers in more than 19 countries, Bharti Airtel CMD Sunil Bharti Mittal said, ‘The brand needs to speak to different countries… think internationally. The brand has to connect with the youth in the geographies that we are in.’
Indian media earlier reported that Bharti Airtel purchased 70 per cent stakes in UAE-based Dhabi Group’s Warid, one of the six mobile operators in Bangladesh, for $300 million.
Newspaper reports in Bangladesh, however, suggested that Warid had shown to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission that the company’s 70 per cent stakes were sold to Bharti Airtel only for Tk 70 lakh.
The government lost millions of dollars in transfer fees as the BTRC allegedly allowed Warid, which invested more than $600 million in the country, to hand over the stakes to Airtel.
