Hutchison Essar: Going Hutch

A National Brand? Soon, the Hutch brand will also be replacing the Essar name in Delhi Hutch will also be the company’s brand in Chennai and Karnataka when operations are rolled out there However, Hutchison is unlikely to  dispense with its Orange brand in Mumbai Hutch has been conceptualized by the same team that built the Orange brand The brand will be introduced in other countries as well

Eager to shed the multiple and often confused identities that has stuck to it
from past acquisitions, Hutchison Telecom (which runs cellular operations in
India through Hutchison Essar, Hutchison Max Telecom and other affiliates) is on
a new brand creation mode. Taking inspiration from Orange, which it calls India’s
first true brand in mobile services, the Hong Kong-based operator recently
launched a new brand ‘Hutch’ for its newly inaugurated operations in Andhra
Pradesh. Hutch would also be the brand that mobile users would soon get to know
in Chennai and Karnataka, where Hutchison Essar would be rolling out its
operations soon. Incidentally, these new services represent Hutchison’s first
efforts at setting up operations from scratch in India. So far, the company has
been operating in India through acquisitions. The company has spent around Rs
1,200 crore in rolling out networks for these new operations.

Very soon, Hutch would be replacing the Essar name in Delhi. In other words,
Hutch would be the third almost national cellular brand after Airtel and Idea.
However, unlike Airtel and Idea, Hutch is a global brand, one from the family of
Hutchison Telecom’s international communications brands. Hutchison is soon
also expected to do away with the practice of having separate brands for
post-paid and pre-paid customers. "They are just payment options. Why do
you need two brands for them?," remarked a senior Hutchison Essar official.

However, Hutchison is unlikely to dispense with Orange in Mumbai. And even
though as of now its plan to take Hutch to the other circles and Kolkata are not
known, it is most likely that Hutch would beep there too. "We will create a
family of brands which would evolve over a period of time," remarked Asim
Ghosh, director, Hutchison Essar. Ghosh said an emphatic no when asked if Hutch
would be Orange with a different name. "We had a water-tight option of
using the Orange name outside Mumbai but we gave it up," he added.

Hutchison plans to take the Hutch brand to other parts of the world.
Interestingly, the brand has been conceptualized by the same team that built the
Orange brand. Taking a swipe at rival Indian brands which he felt offered
unrealistic promises and utopia to users, Keith Kirby, director of global
branding at Hutchison Telecom claimed that Hutch would be more close to the
reality. "Hutch promises reliability and enjoyment and nothing that’s not
possible to deliver," he said.

As it has already happened in the mature markets of the world, in the years
to come cellular services in India are likely to become commodity services and
operators would have to struggle to sell customers value-added services. It is
then that the brands would play an important role. A strong brand, coupled with
better service and customer care could help cellular operators not only beat
boredom but also vanquish competition. However, it is still unclear what
tangible gains brand building could bring now in country with one of the lowest
mobile penetration in the world (it is going to remain that way for years to
come, after all we are a nation of 1 billion people). Market development should
get priority over brand building.

Both Ghosh and Kirby have promised Hutch would create new standards for
others to follow and offer new innovative services. Sounds great! However, as
for what future has in store for Hutch, it would be prudent to paraphrase Henry
Ford–You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. So we will
have to wait for some action.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey in Hyderabad