The Orange brand in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, through a complicated set of mergers and divisions, was acquired and eventually retained by

Orange S.A. Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

; and currently operates as Orange Business Services India (OBS India). Currently, it has a network with 14

points of presence A point of presence (PoP) is an artificial demarcation point or network interface point between communicating entities. A common example is an ISP point of presence, the local access point that allows users to connect to the Internet with their ...

(PoP) in the country and has offices in eight locations.Orange Business Services in India
''www.orange-business.com'' India houses one of the OBS's four major global service centres in

Gurugram Gurgaon (pronunciation: �ʊɽɡãːw, officially named Gurugram (pronunciation: �ʊɾʊɡɾaːm, is a city located in the northern Indian state of Haryana. It is situated near the Delhi–Haryana border, about southwest of the nationa ...

History

Background of Global ownership of Orange : Before 2000

OBS India traces its presence in India to 1969, when

SITA Sita (; ) also called as Janaki and Vaidehi is a Hindu goddess and the female protagonist of the Hindu epic, ''Ramayana''. She is the consort of Rama, the avatar of the god Vishnu, and is regarded as a form of Vishnu's consort, Lakshmi. She ...

, (Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques), was created to meet the need of the airline industry. The inception of Orange brand was in 1990 in

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

with the formation of "Microtel Communications Ltd " – a consortium initially formed by Pactel Corporation (American),

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...

Millicom Millicom International Cellular SA (NASDAQ U.S.: TIGO, NASDAQ Stockholm: TIGO_SDB) is a Luxembourgish fixed line and mobile telecommunications services provider dedicated to emerging markets in Latin America operating under the Tigo brand. As of ...

and

Matra Matra (an acronym for Mécanique Aviation Traction) was a French industrial conglomerate. During its years of operation, it was engaged in a wide range of business activities, primarily focused around automobiles, bicycles, aeronautics and w ...

(French); and later, to be wholly owned by BAe. In July 1991, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate –

Hutchison Whampoa Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) was an investment holding company based in Hong Kong. It was a Fortune Global 500 company and one of the largest companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. HWL was an international corporation with a dive ...

through a stock swap deal with BAe, acquired a controlling stake of 65% in Microtel, who by then had won a license to develop a Personal communications network (PCN) in United Kingdom. Subsequently, Hutchison renamed Microtel to Orange Personal Communications Services Ltd and on 28 April 1994, 'Orange' brand was launched in the UK mobile phone market . A

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...

structure was adopted in 1995 with the establishment of Orange plc. In April 1996, Orange went public and floated on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...

and

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

, majority owned by Hutchison (48.22%), followed by BAe (21.1%). In June 1996, it became the youngest company to enter the

FTSE 100 The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also called the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the "Footsie" , is a share index of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with (in principle) the highest market ...

, valued at £2.4 billion. And by July 1997 Orange had gained one million customers. The stint as a public company came to an end in October 1999, when it was acquired for US$33 Billion by the German conglomerate –

Mannesmann AG Mannesmann was a German industrial conglomerate. It was originally established as a manufacturer of steel pipes in 1890 under the name "Deutsch-Österreichische Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG". (Loosely translated: "German-Austrian Mannesmann pi ...

. The Mannesmann's acquisition of Orange triggered

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...

to make a

hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...

bid for the German company. Shortly thereafter, in February 2000, Vodafone acquired Mannesmann for US$183 Billion and, decides to divest Orange as the EU regulations wouldn't allow it to hold two mobile licences.

France Télécom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 5 ...

in May 2000, announced the acquisition of the global operations of Orange from Vodafone for US$37 Billion and the transaction was completed in August 2000. #init ImageSize = width:1000 height:250 PlotArea = left:95 right:40 bottom:20 top:20 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal format:mm/yyyy AlignBars = late DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyy Period = from:31/12/1989 till:01/06/2011 #colors Colors = id:canvas value:gray(0.95) # background for whole image id:bars value:gray(0.95) # background for bars id:grid1 value:rgb(0.4,0.6,0.4) # major grid id:grid2 value:rgb(0.80,0.80,1) # minor grid id:gray value:gray(0.6) # for colophon id:gray2 value:gray(0.5) # for text BackgroundColors = canvas:canvas bars:bars ScaleMajor = gridcolor:grid1 unit:year increment:1 start:31/12/1989 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:grid2 unit:month increment:3 start:31/12/1989 #Bar BarData = bar:Nom text:Name bar:Actionnaires text:Shareholders bar:Faits text:Key facts #plot PlotData= bar:Nom from:start till:01/04/1994 color:redorange text:"Communications Microtel Ltd" align:center align:center width:45 bar:Nom from:01/04/1994 till:01/08/2000 color:orange text:"Orange plc" align:center align:center width:45 bar:Nom from:01/08/2000 till:end color:redorange text:"Orange SA" align:center align:center width:45 bar:Actionnaires from:start till:01/07/1991 color:redorange text:"Communications ~Microtel Ltd" align:center width:45 bar:Actionnaires from:01/07/1991 till:01/01/1996 color:orange text:"Hutchison Whampoa" align:center width:45 bar:Actionnaires from:01/01/1996 till:01/09/1999 color:redorange text:"Hutchison Whampoa ~and ~British Aerospace" align:center width:45 bar:Actionnaires from:01/09/1999 till:01/11/1999 color:orange text:"~Mannesmann AG" align:center width:45 bar:Actionnaires from:01/11/1999 till:01/08/2000 color:redorange text:"Vodafone" align:center width:45 bar:Actionnaires from:01/08/2000 till:end color:orange text:"France Télécom" align:center width:45 bar:Faits from:13/02/2001 till:13/02/2001 color:black text:"French stock exchange introdution" width:50 fontsize:M bar:Faits from:01/06/2001 till:01/06/2001 color:black text:"~ ~Itinéris, Ola and ~Mobicarte become Orange" width:50 fontsize:M bar:Faits from:01/06/2006 till:01/06/2006 color:black text:"Wanadoo becomes Orange" width:50 fontsize:M bar:Faits from:21/11/2003 till:21/11/2003 color:black text:"~Exits Paris Stock Exchange" width:50 fontsize:M bar:Faits from:01/11/2008 till:01/11/2008 color:black text:"~Orange Cinéma Séries ~and Orange Sport ~launch" width:50 fontsize:M

Launch of 'Orange' brand in India and its exit : 2000–2006

On 14 February 2000, Hutchison Max – an Indian telecom joint venture majority owned by

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

based

introduced the brand in the country, through the rebranding of its existing

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

telecom circle In India, mobile numbers (including pagers) on GSM, WCDMA, and LTE networks start with either 9, 8, 7 or 6. Each telecom circle is allowed to have multiple private operators; earlier it was two private + BSNL/MTNL, subsequently it changed to three ...

Cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

service – 'Max Touch', to 'Orange'. Shortly, issues arose concerning the ownership of the 'Orange' brand in India, when France Telecom who in May 2000 purchased the worldwide rights for the brand from

made an offer to pick up a significant stake in Hutchison's India operations, in order to own the brand in India. Hutchison turned down the offer, as it had retained the rights over the brand in India through an earlier agreement, but ended up paying royalty to France Telecom. Hutchison Essar He ended using the brand in Jan 2006. Orange returned to the country in July 2007, as Orange Business Services India, when France Telecom acquired the enterprise network services and managed services business of GTL Ltd. Since then, OBS India has grown to become one of the country's major data connectivity solutions provider. France Telecom had earlier entered into a joint venture with BPL Mobile (now

Loop Loop or LOOP may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live * Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets * Loop Mobile, an ...

) – a rival of Hutchinson Max in Mumbai mobile market; but sold its entire 26% stake in JV in December 2004. Thus, it completely exited from its Indian operations, because of dual brand visibility – competing against its own brand Orange, a business run by Hutchison.

Evolution of OBS and return of Orange to India: 2006 – present

In January 2006, Hutchison Essar ''(earlier Hutchison Max)'' ended using Orange brand for its Mumbai operations and started using

Hutch Hutch may refer to: Places * Hutch, Kentucky, an unincorporated community located in Bell County, Kentucky, United States * Hutchinson, Kansas ("Hutch"), a city in Kansas, United States * Hutchinson, Minnesota ("Hutch"), a city in Minnesota, U ...

brand, which was later acquired by Vodafone in 2007. With the strategic ambition to become an integrated player in managed data networks and IP-based communication and hosting for global enterprises, France Telecom on 1 June 2006 announced the consolidation of the group's business services operations and rebranded its existing operations of Equant and

Wanadoo Wanadoo was the Internet service provider division of Orange S.A. It operated in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Mauritius, Madagascar, Lebanon and Jordan. It ceased to operate as ...

to a new entity – 'Orange Business Services' (informally, OBS). The rebranding exercise created France Telecom SA's global brand for mobile telephony, as well as all broadband and business connectivity services – 'Orange'. In July 2007, the brand 'Orange' returned to India as Orange Business Services India, when France Telecom acquired the enterprise network services and managed services business of GTL Ltd fro
Global Group
an Indian network services provider. Through the acquired business, France Telecom received the International and National Long distance license (ILD NLD) in India, that enabled OBS India to provide full range of network and related services to enterprises in India. In March 2008, it was reported that

Reliance Communications Reliance Communications Limited (RCOM) was an Indian mobile network provider headquartered in Navi Mumbai that offered voice and 2G and 3G and 4G data services. In February 2019, the company filed for bankruptcy as it was unable to sell asse ...

was in advanced talks with France Telecom to bring the Orange brand back to Indian cellular market. However, France Telecom denied any such deal and termed it as market speculation. In 2009, it was reported that Orange may apply for MTNL 3G (Jadoo) franchise deal. FT again discarded this report and commented that they would not like to limit themselves in Delhi & Mumbai. In 2010, OBS India opened two offices in India –

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

and

, and ever since, it has grown to nine locations, adding

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

and

Gandhinagar Gandhinagar (, ) is the capital of the state of Gujarat in India. Gandhinagar is located approximately 23 km north of Ahmedabad, on the west central point of the Industrial corridor between Delhi, the political capital of India, and Mu ...

. It directly employs over 2000 employees. As of June 2012, it has a network with 13

point of presence A point of presence (PoP) is an artificial demarcation point or network interface point between communicating entities. A common example is an ISP point of presence, the local access point that allows users to connect to the Internet with their ...

(PoP) in the country. India houses one of the OBS's four major global service centres in Gurugram.

Organisation and operations

OBS India traces its presence in India to 1969, when

, (Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques), was created to meet the need of the airline industry. It operates in eight locations and employs over 2,000 employees. The locations are – Gurgaon, New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad,Gandhinagar and Pune. The major global service center is located in Gurgaon.

Services and solutions

It offers integrated communication solutions and services to local as well as global enterprises in

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

unified communications Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept describing the integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, voice (including IP telephony), mobility features (including e ...

and

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

, which manage and integrate the complexity of international communications and enable multinational corporations to focus on the strategic initiatives that drive their business. The service and solutions portfolio include, * end-to-end

enterprise solutions Enterprise integration is a technical field of enterprise architecture, which is focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments. It is a c ...

in Data Center Management, Server Management, Network Management, PC life-cycle Management, Security Management and Messaging Administration. * deliver and manage complex PBX, IP Voice based solutions, Unified Communications & Collaboration solutions * ITIL-aligned methodology and processes * Application management capabilities across verticals for CRM applications, IPT applications, Database Integration * Remote Infrastructure Management services * WAN-LAN integration, design and management expertise

Case studies

The complex merger operations that led to ownership of Orange by France Telecom and its subsequent branding is a subject for numerous management

case studies A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular fi ...

on topics like

strategic management In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of Resource management, resour ...

brand management In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is pe ...

PEST analysis In business analysis, PEST analysis ("political, economic, socio-cultural and technological") describes a framework of macro-environmental factors used in the environmental scanning component of strategic management. It is part of an external envi ...

, financing methods of

merger and acquisition Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

s and

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loan ...

References

{{Orange S.A. Mobile phone companies of India Information technology companies of India International information technology consulting firms Orange S.A. Companies based in Mumbai Telecommunications companies established in 2000 Indian companies established in 2000 2000 establishments in Maharashtra