Vodafone Idea on Monday announced its integration into one brand called ‘VI’. The launching of a new unified brand will help to bet big on digital for attracting customers and to compete with rivals Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.

Vodafone Idea Ltd. comes with the brand new strategy after two years completion of Vodafone India Ltd. and Idea Cellular Ltd. merger. Both Vodafone and Idea had continued with their independent brand, and advertising campaigns posted the merger in August 2018. Idea has always been a mass rural-focused brand and thus, remained to focus on rural, whereas Vodafone continued to focus on urban appeal. However, the telecom operator saw that the urban-rural appeal of the two brands diluted under Vodafone Idea Brand.

Once, the telecom operator was the largest operator in India with the largest spectrum portfolio of 1846 MHz. It has seen a user base plunge to nearly around 280 million at June end from its user base of 408 million at the time of merging. Analysts said, its Revenue Market Share (RMS) has also plunged about 448 basis points (bps) sequentially to 23.3% in the June quarter, triggered by the heavy market share decline in the urban areas.

Ravinder Takkar, MD and CEO of VIL said the new unified brand has a reliable and robust network and built to meet the digital needs of customers. Last Friday, the operator decided to raise a fund of Rs 25,000 crore through a mix of debt and equity instruments in one or more tranches, to pay out the statutory dues and invest in its network operations to take-on rivals.