When Reliance Jio stepped into the market, the message about to the fellow telecom companies was loud and clear, “The boss has stepped in the game.” Obviously, the competitors were feeling the heat of the competition brought by the Ambani-owned company. In response, there were talks about two of the biggest Indian telecom operators, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular getting into a merger.
But recently, it was made official that both the cellular network service providers have officially completed their merger to become the largest telecom operator in the country with a collective subscriber base of 408 million along the revenue market share of 32.2 per cent.
With this deal, they have dethroned Bharti Airtel from the top who has a subscriber count of 344 million as of July 2018 whereas Reliance Jio has been pushed to the third position in the country with 215 million subscribers.
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Vodafone Idea Limited has stated that the venture will function separately for the consumers i.e. Vodafone and Idea functioning as individual operators, whereas on the operational front, they will be a single entity. On July 9, the merger was given a conditional nod by the Department of Telecom (DoT) and had asked them to fulfil the demands raised for taking the merger on record and making it official.
The companies recently received the final approval and it has been accorded to the merger. The companies will now present the approvals received, before the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and thus, completing the last leg of formalities.
The Vodafone Idea Limited will be owned by three companies, in which, Vodafone will own 45.1 per cent stake, Aditya Birla Group will have 26 per cent and Idea shareholders 28.9 per cent.